


The Curious Incident of the Knight in the Library

by AJHall



Series: The Queen of Gondal [6]
Category: Gondal - Bronte children, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Case Fic, Multi, alt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2012-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/pseuds/AJHall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ill-assorted party of English travellers arrive in Gaaldine, on the very edge of Europe, where tensions and buried secrets in the party are about to erupt in bloody murder.  And murders happening on Palace premises are very much matters of interest to Sherlock, Crown Prince of Gaaldine, whatever the head of Palace Security thinks about high-born amateurs trespassing on his patch.</p><p>A downloadable ebook version appears <a href="http://ajhall.shoesforindustry.net/ebooks/39/ajhall_the_curious_incident_of_the_knight_in_the_library/"> here </a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Hoopoe in an Olive Grove

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to caulkhead, as usual, for sterling beta services.
> 
> The attached should best be considered a genre fusion: Murder in Ruritania. A a result, in a choice between genre conventions and naturalism, genre conventions win hands down.
> 
> A full Dramatis Personae appears at the start of Chapter One and in end notes for all chapters

**Dramatis Personae**

 _The English Party_

Doctor Andrew Atherton, Fellow of St Jerome's College, Oxford, natural philosopher.  
Sir Hector Bainbridge, sometime Master of St Jerome's College, Oxford, now tutor and director of studies for Viscount Dalgliesh  
Crispian, Viscount Dalgliesh, heir to the Duke of Collompton.  
Lady Diana Scoton, daughter of the Duke of Collompton  
Mrs Elizabeth Pickering, sister to Sir Hector and chaperone to Lady Diana  
Miss Frances Pickering, only daughter of Mrs Elizabeth Pickering and companion to Lady Diana  
Mrs Grace Vinson, tiring woman to Lady Diana Scoton  
Benjamin Hatherleigh, private secretary to Viscount Dalgliesh.  
Conte d'Imola, guide and translator to the party  
Jenkins, general factotum.

 _His Britannic Majesty's Legation to the Court of Gaaldine_

Lord Wardale, his Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary  
Lady Wardale, wife to the above  
Lord Philip Derwent, first secretary of the Legation, third son of the Earl of Buxton.

 

 _At the Gaaldine Court._

Mycroft, King of Gaaldine  
Sherlock, Crown Prince of Gaaldine and rightful Prince Consort of Gondal  
Charis, Crown Princess of Gaaldine and rightful Queen of Gondal  
John Watson, personal physician to the Crown Princess and representative of the Queen of Gondal's interests on the Council of Gaaldine  
The Duke of Holderness, Lord Chamberlain of Gaaldine and chairman of the Council of Gaaldine  
Lady Anthea, person of unspecified but vital importance to the King of Gaaldine  
The Count d'Houx, nobleman of Gaaldine with a tragic past  
Andrew Dimmock, head of Palace security  
Jerome Gregson, deputy head of Palace security  
Jonathan, member of the Crown Prince's guard

Assorted guards, servitors, courtiers and people to clean up the mess.

Please note that Frances Pickering and other unmarried female characters without titles are given the mildly anachronistic title "Miss" rather than the contemporary "Mrs" for purposes of disambiguation.

 

 **Chapter One**

Frances, intent on creeping up on the handsome white, pink and black bird without disturbing it, trod on a patch of loose stones, flailed for a moment and slithered helplessly down-slope, the light thorny undergrowth catching at her skirts. The hoopoe flew up and away with a soft, chattering call as if it mocked her.

"Oh! I really am most frightfully sorry." Frances pulled herself to her feet, looking down at the girl in the black dress and broad straw hat, whose easel she had almost overturned. The girl looked blankly back at her.

Belatedly, Frances realised that speaking English was probably slightly optimistic, out here on the very edge of Europe (Dr Atherton had been keen to press on to Constantinople and she had prayed his opinion might prevail, but Lady Diana had started a panic about being snatched away into the harems of the Sultan, and Grace had made bitter comments about plague, bed-bugs and the impossibility of getting proper soap, so her uncle had put his foot down and Gaaldine would represent their furthest East.)

"I do apologise," she said, slowly and carefully in Gondalian. "I did not see you here. I was watching the bird."

The Conte had assured her the languages of the three kingdoms were sufficiently close that knowledge of one would allow her to get by in the others. It had worked in the border provinces, but this was the first time she had put it to the test in the capital itself.

The girl's face brightened immeasurably. "Oh, that's very good," she said, in Latin. "You've got that 'chrk' sound perfectly. It trips lots of people up. Down here, of course, it's more of a 'shrr' – I always think it sounds as if people are a little drunk, even when they aren't. You must be one of Dr Atherton's party from England."

Frances gulped. "How did you know?" Latin was, mercifully, far easier than Gondalian,  
thanks to all that intensive study on the road, though goodness only knew how Lady Diana would manage – she'd ostentatiously feigned sleep during Dr Atherton's lessons, even when the ruts and potholes would have kept Morpheus himself awake. As for the local languages; Lady Diana had compared Gondalian to a cat coughing up a fur-ball only yesterday, and still couldn't manage a simple "Good morning" in that language.

"Oh, my husband mentioned you were expected in the capital. He has been corresponding with Dr Atherton for years. They share a common interest in henbane and suchlike plants."

"Your husband?" Frances tried to conceal her surprise. Hard to guess ages, of course, given the unfamiliar clothing and hair-styles of this remote region and the girl's eerie self-possession, but she seemed very young.

"We will have been married a year in December. May women not marry at fourteen in your country?"

"Some do," Frances said. "And most before they are twenty." Honesty compelled her to add, "Not me, though. I am twenty-four, and I do not think it likely I will marry at all."

"Oh." The young woman put her head on one side, as if thinking about that. "You were recently in Gondal, I understand. Tell me, were you in the capital for the midsummer festival? Did they send the lighted lanterns down the river on the flower rafts this year? Who won the boat race? Almeida or de Samara?"

Even through the cool formality of the Latin a note of yearning rang through. Frances, who was a stranger to homesickness on her own account – left to herself, she wouldn't have stopped even at Constantinople, but gone on and on until they reached Cathay, and whatever lay beyond – recognised it for what it was. She ventured a shy, sympathetic smile.

"It was all exceedingly beautiful, but I'm afraid I do not know the different teams. Though the captain of the winning boat was extremely handsome. Dark hair and the most melting soft eyes. And a sword-cut high up on one cheek-bone."

"That's Rupert Lestrade. The de Samara boat, then. The scar's from a duel. He's supposed to have been out upwards of twenty times. They call him 'the Widowmaker'."

"Have you met him?"

"Not for years. He was exiled to his country estates before his twentieth birthday. Not even Marguerite told me the details, so it must have been the most _tremendous_ scandal."

She sounded a little wistful. Frances could hardly blame her, recalling as she did a certain strapping, black-haired lad, son of the local squire, who'd owned her heart when she herself had been twelve or so, though he'd never directed a word in her direction. He'd been packed off to the Dutch wars by his family with an unspoken air that, whatever he might get up to there, at least there was a good chance the family wouldn't have to know about it. Frances had never heard for sure what had become of him.

"Surely he must have been recalled, if he was captaining a boat at the festival?"

The girl made a face. "He was always a close companion of the Heir. Doubtless influence won his pardon. You must have still been in Gondal at the time of my – at the death of the King. How did the people react?"

"With very great grief," Frances said, soberly, recalling that night; all the lights and fires doused, whispering knots of people on every street corner, and the great bell of the Cathedral, its clapper muffled, tolling on and on, beating against exhausted, strung up nerves, so that it seemed as if it would call the dead to judgment before dawn would ever come.

She pulled herself back from the reverie with an effort. "Yes; with grief and – some of our party thought – much fear. We paid our condolences in form, and then left straightway for Gaaldine. My mother and the Conte d'Imola – he has acted as our courier since Rome – thought it best, and at length they carried the day."

"They did well." Frances was surprised at the grim note in the girl's voice. "I doubt you would have found your passage across the border as untroubled had you delayed it. But you cannot have been in the capital more than a day or so, surely?"

"We arrived yesterday." Frances smiled. "The gentlemen of the party would never have forgiven us for hurrying on to yet another city once the sporting season started, especially since they had letters of introduction to a nobleman with a great estate in the North. We were there three weeks and had it been left to the Viscount we would have stayed twice as long. He glories in the chase. And there were splendid Roman ruins close by, so we could hardly drag Dr Atherton away, either."

The girl laughed. "Ah, that sounds familiar. Oh! John! Is it time already?"

Frances jumped. She had not noted the approach of the stocky, sandy-haired man in the olive green jerkin and breeches.

"Very nearly. Time to start packing up, in any event. What have you devised?"

The girl moved her easel sideways, pointing with the end of her charcoal. Now it was in full view, Frances was struck both by the skill displayed and the oddity of the composition. It was a study of the ruined castle which surmounted the overgrown, tangled peak on whose lower slopes they were sitting, looking across at the palace which had superseded it a couple of centuries ago.

So far, so conventional. What was anything but conventional were the dotted and dashed lines depicted across the hillside. They could not be tracks – one, indeed, seemed to go right up the overhanging crag immediately below the ruin itself. But they clearly meant something.  
The girl looked enquiringly at the man she had addressed as John. "Well? Do you think it will answer?"

"Perhaps. But it's good practice not to discuss one's strategy except with those in the inner circles of your staff council." The twinkle in John's eye as he glanced at Frances belied the sting of his words.

"I don't think my people would have let her up here if they'd thought her a spy for Blue team," the girl said, matching his tone.

"Your people? I didn't see anyone," Frances said, awkwardly conscious that she might be trespassing. She had grown so used to rambling almost unchecked around the countryside that it had not occurred to her that she might have to seek anyone's permission to enter the grounds surrounding the old castle.

"I know. They're _very_ good." The girl looked down at her sketch. "I hope they're good enough. Sherlock will _crow_ so, if Blue team take the pennant again. Anyway, I must be on my way. John reminds me I have a surprise night attack on a defended position to plan for. I daresay we will meet again soon. As soon as you have waited on Lady Wardale she will be arranging something at the Legation. Until then, farewell."

She rose gracefully to her feet and dropped a formal curtsey. A servant appeared, apparently out of the undergrowth, to take her easel and sketching bag. Frances, slightly bemused, returned the curtsey and watched as the little party wound their way out of sight down the hillside. Then, revelling in her freedom and in the unaccustomed late October sunshine, she turned her attention back to the pursuit of the hoopoe.

………..

"That's the last of them," Elizabeth said, drawing a neat double line under the columns of figures in the accounting book, and scattering sand to blot the page. She and the Conte d'Imola exchanged a look of mutual satisfaction and respect. Heaven only knew what the Conte might have been able to put over on her brother if Hector had remained in actual, rather than purely nominal, charge of the party's coffers. Still, the party would have a great deal more trouble from Rome onwards without the Conte. Elizabeth was prepared to accept the labourer was worthy of his hire. At least, provided she kept a watchful eye on "Expenses", "Sundries" and "Contingencies".

"I shall go to make our duties at the Legation," the Conte said. "I have not been in Gaaldine's capital for some years and need to reacquaint myself with the proper protocol."

He rose, just as Grace ushered in a tall young man with a vivid, alert face. The Conte almost tripped over his own feet and, without even the barest acknowledgement of the new arrival, pushed past him and out of the room. Grace and Elizabeth exchanged long-suffering looks. The Conte's regular outbreaks of "temperament" were, in Elizabeth's opinion, a bit much, even for an Italian with a tragic history, at least some of which might be true.

The visitor walked to the window and watched the Conte running down the street, a malicious smile playing about his lips.

The door to the upstairs apartments was flung wide and Dr Atherton himself appeared in the doorway. "My dear sir! I received your note only moments ago. So the dog died, did it?"

"Almost instantaneously." The young man looked at Dr Atherton with an odd, abstracted expression, almost as if thinking of something else. "You were quite right about the effects of dessication. The toxicity of the leaves was almost unimpaired. Do you wish to assist at the dissection?"

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure. Mrs Pickering, pray make my excuses to Sir Hector and the Viscount. Tell them not to delay waiting on Lord Wardale on my account; I have no idea when I will be back. Lead on, sir!"

Grace and Elizabeth were left looking at each other.

"Well," Grace said. "I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies, ma'am. At least this one speaks English. And knows how to wash."

As opposed to the other lame ducks, impecunious scholars, eccentrics and (in Elizabeth's private opinion) at least two outright charlatans who had appeared and claimed acquaintance with Dr Atherton in their progress across Europe. It was, she supposed, reasonable for an eminent natural philosopher to correspond with people who then wished to meet him in person when he appeared in their cities. Why, though, did they all insist on being so strange?

"English. Washes," she agreed. There came a shriek from the next room and the sound of something being thrown, hard, against the wall.

"Oh." Elizabeth's voice was dull with foreboding.

"That'll be her ladyship," Grace said, obviously.

The door opened. "Butter! Why isn't it possible to get butter in this godforsaken hole? I can't eat oil. It will ruin my skin. Send someone out for butter. However much it costs. Now. Go!"

Elizabeth and Grace exchanged another look.

"Yes, your ladyship," Grace said. "Right away."

……….

Lord Wardale, out of the corner of his eye, caught sight of the Conte d'Imola's unnaturally smooth, smirking face and tried not to shudder. Not for him to dictate whom Sir Hector Bainbridge chose to engage as courier for his party, but even being in the same room as that unmanned creature made him feel ill. It was bad enough when wretched Italian peasants did it to their sons, in the hope of sharing in the fabulous rewards which the leading operatic castrati could command. But for a man of good family to allow it to happen, reputedly justifying it by some quip to the effect that the pleasures of the flesh were transient but the pleasures of music were eternal – that, Lord Wardale thought, bespoke a habit of mind not merely irremediably foreign but truly and without doubt perverted.

Which, he added to himself with a man-of-the-world's cynicism, would probably guarantee the Conte d'Imola a tremendous success at the court of Gaaldine. Perhaps that prosy, gout-ridden old bore Sir Hector had more discernment than his appearance suggested. And now here was Viscount Dalgliesh asking him for recommendations as to the _specific pleasures_ of Gaaldine's capital – really, these young court bloods were all the same, hardly able to tell the difference between His Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and a common bawd. Still, at least that implied that whatever influence the Conte d'Imola had over his party, the Viscount seemed immune to the temptations of _unnatural_ vice.

"I doubt a staid old married man like myself is the best person to advise, my lord," Lord Wardale said, assuming the avuncular tone he reserved for such occasions. "However, Derwent, perhaps you'll correct me should my information be outdated, but I understand that – ah – 'Big Gertie's' establishment near the Cathedral enjoys a high reputation."

His secretary, Lord Philip Derwent nodded, solemnly. "No, sir; as ever your finger remains on the pulse of the city. If you wish, my lord, I can arrange a small private supper there with some of the younger members of the Corps Diplomatique. Would tomorrow evening suit?"

It would, it appeared, suit the Viscount admirably. Lord Wardale heaved a discreet sigh of relief. Big Gertie's girls were politically astute, cultured and, to the extent anyone could ensure such a matter, clean. With only a modicum of luck (and provided the wretched boy hadn't brought anything with him) there was every chance the Viscount might leave Gaaldine without having picked up anything more than usually unfortunate.

After a little more chit-chat, Derwent ushered the party out. Lord Wardale waited.

It took longer than he had expected for Derwent to return, which put him on edge, not helped by his going to refill his snuff-box and discovering his stores unexpectedly depleted. Since only he and Derwent had keys to that particular cupboard – one did not leave something of such value where anyone might purloin it – it was all too apparent who was to blame.

Blast the boy! It wasn't that he minded Derwent helping himself to a pinch or so here and there – he'd been young himself once, and the young were opportunistic. No bad trait in someone hoping to make a career at Court. Within reason, one could almost consider it a compliment to Lord Wardale's taste; his snuff was of the finest and driest to be had.

No, the thing that irked him was the sheer scale of the depredations. It was as if Derwent either thought him too stupid to notice or – more probably – too intimidated by his smooth, aristocratic young secretary as to complain.

The worst thing was, he was almost certainly correct in his assumption.

It was hardly Lord Wardale's fault his father had been a mere baronet. Surely, it was to his credit that he had risen to his present heights on his own merits. However, at times like these, a dark tide of envy washed through him for those who, being born to the highest reaches of the English aristocracy, breathed its rarefied air with unconscious ease.

Suppose Derwent, the Earl's son, was even now laughing about him with Viscount Dalgliesh, whom he doubtless knew? The Duke of Collompton and the Earl of Buxton had both been prominent figures of the Court during the last reign. Small wonder if their sons found much in common.

Lord Wardale threw caution aside and rang the bell, demanding brandy when the servant arrived. It might, perhaps, be a little early in the morning, but he deserved something to get the taste of having to make small-talk with that oily castrato fellow out of his mouth.

Two glasses later, the day bore a rosier hue.

A new king sat on the English throne these days, one who valued Lord Wardale as he ought. Gondal, the neighbouring kingdom, also had a new King James.

Dispatches had come in overnight from His Majesty's Ambassador to Gondal. He wrote guardedly but with unmistakeable purport. Fresh winds were blowing, even in this godforsaken backwater. Occasions conspired to the favour of the new men, whether in the three kingdoms or back home. All a man had to do to achieve success was to spread sail and let the following wind take him where it would, holding his hand firm on the tiller.

Lord Wardale reached for the decanter and poured himself a third glass of brandy.

……….

Lady Wardale stole yet another look around the withdrawing room and wished the tea party was already over, rather than yet to begin. She ran through the names on the guest list, trying to derive what crumbs of comfort she could. Sir Hector's widowed sister, Elizabeth Pickering, the English party's chaperone, could hardly be too formidable, and her unmarried, aging daughter, Phyllis – no, Frances – would probably be too overawed by the atmosphere of the Legation to utter a word. Lady Diana Scoton, though –

The little that had reached Lady Wardale through her gossip network suggested that the Duke of Collompton's daughter could be distinctly difficult, should the mood take her.

Nor did the visitors from the Gaaldine court offer much prospect of relief. Certainly not Lady Anthea; hooded-eyed, too intelligent for her own good and reputedly the mistress of the King, even though Derwent, who always pretended to have privileged sources within the Palace crowd, had laughed outright at _that_ suggestion.

The Crown Princess was harmless enough, she supposed, in herself. If only the very sight of her didn't remind Lady Wardale of the appalling day, almost six months ago now, in which Roger had formally presented his letters of appointment to the Palace.

Lady Wardale still shuddered to recall the Crown Prince, deputising for his brother, who had turned to her after exchanging a few brief courtesies with Roger. In a rapid, idiomatic French which had stretched her linguistic talents to their utmost, he had quizzed her about England's drove roads and fattening grounds; slaughterhouses and packing sheds. It had been as if he wanted to rub her face in the source of her dowry (a golden attraction to the impoverished heir to a baronetcy - no thought then of the Peerage and she wished there never had been). Yes, her father had built a fortune on the supply of salt beef to the Navy, caring little if King or Parliament approved his estimates. But it was honest money, as honest as anything in Government purchasing ever got, anyway. She would kill whoever within the Legation had seen fit to tell the Gaaldine royal house that the Envoy's wife bore the taint of trade. Philip Derwent, probably. If only his father weren't so important, so Roger might send him packing and get some honest clerk to scribe his dispatches.

Six women to drink tea. How difficult could the matter be, after all?

……….  
"Anthea, can you do something for me?" Charis hoped she'd managed the right tone of nonchalance in her request; Lady Anthea was something of an unknown quantity even after all these months.

"You have to address yourself predominantly to Lady Diana and Lady Wardale at tea," Anthea said, not looking up from her commonplace book as they paced, gracefully, through the gravelled walk of the Italian garden.

Charis gritted her teeth. Anthea's pose of omniscience – her insistence on answering the question one had not yet got round to asking, or which, in this particular case, one had thought of asking and already discarded – was practically an incitement to violence.  
"I know that. I was wondering about afterwards. I should like to contrive an opportunity to talk further with Frances Pickering."

"Oh yes. You met her in the grounds of the old castle, just after they arrived, didn't you?"

 _And I will see you in Hell before I ask how you know that._

"I think she brought me luck. She slipped on some loose stones and that was what gave me the idea of letting loose the sheep to cover our night attack." The morning's grievance returned in full force. "And whatever some people are saying, Red Team won fair and square – it _wasn't_ Sherlock letting me get away with it to avoid having to give me the pearl bracelets."

That did bring Anthea's head up from her book. "Newcomers to Court or just very stupid? No-one else would imagine the Crown Prince values a pair of pearl bracelets more than he values winning."

Whatever she thought about Anthea's mannerisms, Charis had the highest respect for her knowledge of Court. A smile rose to her lips. "Really?"

"Really." After a moment Anthea added, "Of course, it's safer for you if they think that he only let you win. Especially if the Pretender's spies believe it."

"Are we having another outbreak of espionage?" Best to speak of it so, as if it were murrain in cattle. Certainly before Anthea.

Anthea returned to the contemplation of her book. After a short while she said, seemingly unconnected with anything which had gone before. "Dr Atherton's party are persons of interest to some within the Palace."

 _Why can this woman only speak in riddles?_

"Frances Pickering is a person of interest _to me."_

Anthea's head came up again, scrutinising Charis in a cool, leisurely way which made her want to stamp her foot, snatch the commonplace book out of Anthea's black-lace mittened hands and throw it in the carp-pond.

"I might invite Mrs Pickering and her daughter on a tour of some of the charitable projects which engage the ladies of the Court, once Lady Wardale's tea party is over," Anthea said. "Lady Diana is hardly likely to importune me to make one of the party. Especially not if I mention the words 'Poor Persons' in connection with the hospital. And then, when we get there, I can have the Bursar engage Mrs Pickering in conversation – I feel persuaded that her interests in the hospital will be more in its funding and management than in its patients – while I take Frances Pickering through the wards. But I'd be obliged if we could contrive to stumble across you at a time and place where your charitable impulses haven't required you to bathe in blood to the elbow. And, hopefully, without one of Big Gertie's staff as your patient."

On anyone except Anthea, that might have passed for wry humour. Charis decided to take it at face value.

"Thank you. So, should we to tea?"


	2. Two Gents Conspiring

"And that, gentlemen, brings me to the final item on the agenda." The Lord Chamberlain shuffled his papers together, as if giving the other men round the long oval table leave to do likewise. "The All Souls Eve ball. I am sure that in the light of the recent tragedy in Alwentdale – to say nothing of the death of his late Majesty King Ambrosine XVII – we are all agreed that, however many tears and reproaches our decision may wring from our wives and daughters, the only appropriate thing is to cancel it."

"No."

Sherlock's flat monosyllable cut across the rising buzz of assent in the room. The Lord Chamberlain paused, as if unsure what he had heard.

"Your grace? I'm sorry?"

"I have discussed the matter with my brother. He and I are in complete agreement. Genia would find cancelling the ball on her account absurd. At least, unless you would have cancelled it on account of the other casualties at the Residence, had she survived the explosion. Which I give leave to doubt."

"And the Crown Princess?" The Lord Chamberlain demanded. "It is not just the late Queen who demands our respect. King Ambrosine XVII was, after all, Princess Charis' father."

Oversensitivity, or was that a ghost of a disrespectful snigger from somewhere at the far end of the table? No matter. John leaned forwards and cleared his throat.

"If you'll permit me? I knew his late grace of Gondal well, both as his physician and – making all due allowance for the difference of ranks between us – as a friend. Few in this room are privileged to say as much. And one thing which characterised his grace was his directness. He was not, if I may say so, a man who choked back his opinion for form's sake."

"If one wanted to hear one's eyes damned by an expert, crossing King Ambrosine's line in the chase would do it every time," Sherlock observed. "Be assured, gentlemen, I'd not lightly risk incurring his grace's wrath, even from beyond the grave. Especially not on All Hallows Eve."

"I can second that," John said. "On the subject of mourning, his grace King Ambrosine was as firm as he was on most other things. As you know, gentlemen, he underwent a slow decline and was an invalid for much of the last year that the Crown Princess spent in Gondal. Shortly before we left Gondal for Gaaldine, he expressed to me the wish that, having stolen one year of her grace's youth with his illness – as he, in his generosity of spirit expressed it – the burden of mourning his death should be rendered as light as possible for her. I am fully persuaded he would wish the ball to go ahead."

Before the ensuing silence could become too loaded, Sherlock sprang to his feet, sweeping all his papers into the official minute-keeper's lap.

"We should leave it there. If the objective of such meetings is to establish consensus, then we have achieved apogee. A King of Gondal and a Queen of Gaaldine in perfect agreement is not a conjunction which often decorates the heavens. Holderness, I take it the ball is included within the ordinary entertainments budget so we don't need to discuss specific appropriations? Excellent. Gentlemen, good day."

John caught up with him half-way down the cloisters.

"And now would you like to explain precisely what that performance was in aid of? You go out of your way to avoid court functions in the ordinary way, and the King, if anything, is even more reluctant to attend. I should have thought the last thing you'd have been interested in was going to elaborate lengths to ensure the ball went ahead."

"No ordinary ball, John. An All Souls Eve ball. And therefore, as you know full well – it's the same across all three kingdoms – a masked affair."

In case any of the dead chose to return, to mingle with the living and inveigle those they had loved into one last dance. Despite himself, John shuddered. He might still feel a hollow-chested, tearing sense of loss whenever he thought of Felicia (accompanied, all too often, by a stab of guilt at the recollection of how infrequently that seemed to occur, these days). Still, he could hardly claim in clear conscience that he would welcome Felicia's reappearance in the flesh. Not now his life was so complicated already.

He looked up to see Sherlock regarding him, bright-eyed and alert.

"The dead know everything or they know nothing."

"Which is supposed to reassure me how, precisely?"

Sherlock's answer was forestalled by the arrival of a member of his guard, who saluted respectfully enough, but with the unmistakable air of a man agog to deliver important news.

"Yes, Jonathan?"

"One of the parties you're interested in, sir, is in position and t'other has just left his lodgings. Heading right way, at all accounts, and they're ready for you there. 'Fraid you'd not get away from your meeting in time, sir."

"Oh, I'd that well in hand. But thank you. Come on, John. We're needed at a wine shop."

His stride lengthened, but John had been expecting that and, despite his lack of height compared to Sherlock, had no difficulty keeping up. From long experience, he forebore to enquire where they were going or to press his enquiries about the All Souls Eve ball.

Instead, he observed, "That man's shoulder is never going to recover sufficiently to allow him to return to active military duties. Are you proposing to tell him?"

"Why should I? In my experience, soldiers generally have the ability to make such assessments for themselves. It puts that of the average physician in the shade."

"Certainly that of whichever butcher extracted that arrow."

"Master Ripley never claimed his skills lay in the area of field surgery. And even you, John, would have been somewhat pushed to achieve a perfect result given Jonathan was forced to improvise an evacuation and the harrying of an enemy's retreat from woodland cover within hours of the extraction. Anyway, I have sufficient able-bodied men in my guard. It's men with nimble wits I lack. Jonathan's position's secure enough."

"Then I suggest you tell him. If his mind is clouded with worry, his recovery will be set back yet further. Here?"

"Here," Sherlock agreed, and gave six rapid taps on the narrow oak door set in the side-wall of the alley. It opened instantly, giving upon a steep flight of stone doors down into a cellar. The cellar linked to another; they went up another flight of stairs, out of another doorway, through an alleyway and then up a creaky wooden outdoor staircase, partially sheltered by overhanging eaves. At the top was a balcony, and another door. As Sherlock put his hand to the latch he turned to look at John.

"Not a word, beyond this point."

John nodded. On the far side of the door they found themselves in an upstairs gallery, a place of rough board floors through which voices came up. They sat down on either side of an upturned barrel, on rough-hewn stools that would never have been given countenance at court. A silent servitor poured wine: more than passable, despite the surroundings.

The voices below became louder; plainly they were unaware that anyone might be positioned in the eyrie above, able to hear every word.

Hear but not – at least in John's case – understand. He had attended enough soldiers on enough battlefields to acquire a smattering of most of the languages of Europe, though mainly limited to the profanities and invocations uttered by men in pain. The two men below them were speaking English, he knew that much, but what they were discussing was a closed book.

But not to Sherlock. He leant forward across the barrel top, taking rapid notes. They were there perhaps a turn of the glass, perhaps a little longer, before John heard one of the two men, speaking, this time, heavily accented Gaaldine, call for the reckoning. The moment they had paid and left Sherlock, without bothering to go through any formality of the sort, was up and back down the outside stairs, out into the street.

"Quick," he said, whisking John down yet another of the maze of alleys which criss-crossed the older part of the capital. "We have a call to pay."

"A call? On whom?"

"On Dr Atherton. Though he's not there. He's been called away to the other side of the city, to see a man who wants to sell him a mermaid."

"A _mermaid_?"

"It's a very good one. I had a look at it myself and even I could hardly see the stitching. Dr Atherton will be happily engrossed for hours."

In the world of Sherlock logic, setting off to pay a call on a man he had taken steps to ensure would not to be there to receive him made, John supposed, admirable sense.

A sullen manservant – whom Sherlock addressed in French which seemed, even to John's decidedly non-expert ear, to be unexpectedly hesitant and inaccurate – admitted them to Dr Atherton's lodgings. He furnished them with wine and small spiced cakes and bade them await his master's return.

"Presbyterian, of Scotch-Irish stock," Sherlock observed, as the servant excused himself to pursue his business below. "Despises his nominal master for being a dangerous freethinker – Dr Atherton's three-quarters of the way to being a full-blown atheist, but I doubt he's grasped that, or he'd have decamped from the party already. He's a romantic with at least one foot in the past. And, being a romantic, he cherishes a hopeless passion for one of the women in the party, who is so oblivious to his very existence she could not – if challenged – name him accurately within three guesses. He knows that, incidentally."

John nodded, and nibbled one of the cakes. Sherlock would hardly be here about a love-lorn manservant.

The door to the street was flung open and an arrogant English voice shouted, "Jenkins!"

John's spine froze. He had never heard that voice before today. Yet he would have betted his life – and he, John Watson, was most emphatically a betting man with all that implied – that the voice's owner had spent one turn of the glass unseen beneath him on the floor of the wine shop, talking emphatically and confidentially in a language he did not understand, but which had caused Sherlock to scribble frantic notes in a common-place book.

Moments later the door to the room burst open. "I trust Jenkins has seen properly to your comfort? Your grace, how may I be of service?"

He spoke Latin; the _lingua franca_ of the educated classes. Sherlock responded in the same language.

"I had hoped to see Dr Atherton; he and I have corresponded for some years on issues of natural philosophy. But I understand him to be detained elsewhere in the town."

"I do not believe he will be long; he said something about wishing to acquire a specimen for his cabinet of curiosities. You may, perhaps, have heard of the celebrated Oxford rivalry between him and Dr Ashmole. Would you care to wait?"

"Thank you. John, may I present Mr Benjamin Hatherleigh? Mr Hatherleigh; Dr John Watson."

They exchanged bows.

"Your grace's condescension overwhelms me," the young man murmured. "I had not thought the name of a humble private secretary would have come to your grace's ears."

For a moment John thought he caught a flicker of Sherlock's habitual savage reaction against those who sought, too obviously, to flatter his vanity. If it ever existed it was gone in an instant, leaving Sherlock all charm, pouring out a flood of small-talk.

Hatherleigh strove to rise to the occasion. After a few minutes he even felt enough at ease to produce his snuff-box – an oddly garish old-gold affair with his initials in monogram on the lid – and offer them a pinch. Somewhat to John's surprise Sherlock, who normally preferred to set light to his tobacco before inhaling it, accepted. It set the seal on Hatherleigh's awed bedazzlement.

After about a half-turn of the glass Sherlock sprang to his feet, declared himself devastated he was unable longer to await Dr Atherton's return, and left. John smiled apologetically at the baffled secretary as he whisked out of the door in Sherlock's wake.

He caught up with Sherlock halfway down the street.

"Would you care to explain what is going on?"

"Had to get out of there before Mrs Pickering and that maid woman - Grace Vinson – get back from the Legation. I made a bad blunder when the party arrived in the capital; I came to see Dr Atherton and allowed those two to know I spoke English. Of course, I took care not to identify myself, so there's a sporting chance they may not associate Dr Atherton's over-eager visitor with the Crown Prince who _condescended_ – " Sherlock almost spat the word "- to pay a call this afternoon. But I'd prefer that smooth young man didn't realise that I _could_ have eavesdropped on him this afternoon, let alone that I did."

"Why? Who was he meeting?"

"Philip Derwent. Lord Wardale's secretary. Who, incidentally, seems not only to be helping himself to Lord Wardale's snuff, but to be purloining sufficiently large amounts to supply his friends. Hm. Does that display wild confidence in Wardale's spinelessness or is it a daring throw on Derwent's part to impress Hatherleigh with his generosity?"

"How do you know it's Lord Wardale's snuff?"

"It's a unique blend. Mycroft had it made up for him as a gift to welcome him to Gaaldine, and he appreciated it so much that he prevailed on my brother to tell him the name of the blender. Since when, he's been a very loyal customer. Apparently he consumes the stuff in heroic quantities – though today's events cast a rather different light on that."

John resisted the temptation to enquire how the King found time to govern, if he had to spend so much of his day monitoring the tobacco intake of the heads of minor legations.

"Hatherleigh and Derwent know each other?"

Sherlock flashed a smile that showed his teeth. "Rather more than 'know', I think. In any event, they were at university together. I suspect, by the way, despite Hatherleigh's recent parade of his obscure origins, Derwent relied on him to fund their position among the fashionable set. Hatherleigh had no trouble ensuring his college bills were discharged, unlike Derwent. But when it comes to tangible proofs of fatherly affection, being the first-born of a Duke beats being the third son of an Earl, every time."

"First-born -?"

"On the wrong side of the blanket, much to the Duke's regret. Especially when his Duchess later presented him with that empty-headed, vicious little brute Viscount Dagliesh as an heir to his titles and estates. Odd how often that happens, the brains and character going down the illegitimate line. Not that Hatherleigh's character is _good_ , precisely, but there's plenty of it."

"So – you suspect them of treason?"

"An interesting point. Half of what they were discussing earlier would be enough to leave their heads decorating London Bridge if it came to James of England's attention. And not theirs alone. But none of that threatens our interests. Though there is something – I'm sure there's something. Why can't I see it?"

Sherlock paused, and then shook his head. "Well, one good thing came out of that excessively tedious half-hour. Even under a mask, I'm fairly certain I will recognise Benjamin Hatherleigh again."

"A mask?"

"Do keep up, John. The All Souls Eve ball. What an opportunity for every high-ranking conspirator in the land to mingle in plain sight with those whom they dare not be caught speaking to on any normal night of the year. And that imbecile Holderness actually thought we should cancel it! As if the realm's safety were secured only by arms. No, I'm looking forward to it. Very much indeed."


	3. Three Ladies' Dresses

**Three Ladies' Dresses**

Philip smiled, concealing his irritation with the ease of long practice. Good grief, how could Lady Wardale _fuss_ so? It was a masked ball, not the fomenting of a _coup d'etat_. Thank God there was no danger of Lord Wardale's being awarded an embassy to France or Spain or anywhere that actually mattered.

"Yes, ma'am, I've cultivated my sources in the Palace extensively." He formed his features into what, he thought sourly, would no doubt have been classed as a simper were he a girl. "Indeed, my manservant may have difficulty in escaping an action for breach of promise from the Crown Princess' tiring woman."

Lady Wardale's face registered alarm before, mercifully, she recognised the jest and relaxed into a weak smile.

"Thank you, so much. Of course – a masked ball – so many dangers of making an inadvertent breach of protocol – over-familiarity – presumption –"

He waited until her mindless bleating ran down to a stop.

"You may be quite sure, ma'am, my information as to what the Royal party will be wearing is as accurate as it can be. Identifying the King, I'm afraid, may nonetheless be an issue – his dress has always been subdued and is likely to be so even at the ball, though he has let it be known that he does not propose to assume formal mourning for the Queen –"

"So shocking!" Lady Wardale murmured reflexively.

"Indeed, ma'am. Still, his height is distinctive. Best treat all tall men in sober clothing with caution, ma'am. The Crown Princess will be wearing mourning of a sort – black velvet and dark red brocade, according to her tiring woman. The Crown Prince –"

Here Philip paused. Obtaining that information had been costly, and in more than money. Though, if all went well, it was an investment which would repay itself ten-fold.

 _Midnight blue, shot with gold, silver and flame to catch the light, like fireflies in an autumn garden at dusk, or fireworks exploding against the night sky._

What message was that intended to send in the convoluted game of dynastic politics in Gaaldine? Last month's explosion in Alwentdale had done more than remove one key piece from the board; it had changed the relations between the others irrevocably. A widowed King who conspicuously refused to wear mourning for his wife's death. A Crown Prince who must, for the first time in almost twenty years, be truly appreciating the difference between being heir presumptive and heir apparent. A neglected Crown Princess, who might – perhaps – now be wondering if a better bargain should have been made for her.

Matters, Philip sensed, were coming to a head. Positioning oneself in the right place would be key to a successful outcome.

"And the Crown Prince?" Lady Wardale said, rapping him on the arm with her fan in a way she no doubt considered roguish.

"My apologies, ma'am; my thoughts were wandering. I hear contradictory accounts, ma'am. One can only be sure that whatever the Crown Prince wears will be tailored to a nicety."

"He does dress with considerable flair," Lady Wardale said, with a cool restraint Philip mentally filed for future reference. "In any event, his mannerisms are most distinctive. I doubt he will be the most difficult person to recognise. Well, that accounts for the Royal party. I confess, I'm more agog to see what our visitors from England will be wearing. Think of it, they were at Versailles not five months ago. And Lady Diana is such a stylish young lady. She will be bound to have taken due account of the latest French modes. I do wonder what she will be wearing this evening."

Philip left her to her wondering. He had to don his own outfit, a doublet in a velvet of a deep lapis lazuli shade with gold piping and a gold trimmed mask. It flattered his colouring, of course, but once he'd put it on he was struck by doubt. Before his superimposition of an inescutcheon bearing the arms of Gondal, the Crown Prince's shield had been azure, a single sword, or. Was Philip's colour scheme a little too blatant a reference to that?

He shrugged. The doublet was bought, now, if not paid for (and hardly likely to be so any time soon, absent an unexpected run of luck at the gaming tables). Princes were notoriously susceptible to the most outrageous flattery. The game was his to win, if only he played his hand shrewdly enough.

And then unpaid tailors' bills and the need to flatter Lady Wardale and her sot of a husband would alike be things of the past.

He straightened his shoulders and strode down the Legation staircase to where the Envoy and his lady awaited.

…………

A tear leaked out of the corner of her eye and Frances thanked her lucky stars for the blessed concealment of the mask.

"Is he being truly awful?" a voice whispered, from the far side of the pillar behind which she had taken refuge. "No, don't look round. I'll get John to distract him, and while they're talking you can steal out of the ball room through the East door. It's the one with the dreadful equestrian portrait of the last King, Sherlock's uncle, hanging above it. Entirely the wrong bit and ridiculous stirrups. And his seat can't possibly have been that bad. Third door on the left, down that corridor."

Losing the Viscount proved easier than she had feared, with the help of a collaborator. After only one false turn, Frances hit upon the right room, and was startled to find the Crown Princess, stripped to her stays, her discarded dress already laid out neatly on a settle and a tiring maid hovering nearby with a look of bland, vaguely benign unflappability which, Frances supposed, was the sort of expression servants assumed in your presence if you were a princess. Not much like Grace's weary frown, which conveyed that squeezing Frances in on top of her duties to Lady Diana and mother was a significant imposition.

"We swap," the Crown Princess explained. "I had the idea when I saw you edging away for the third time. Is he always that bad?"

Frances shook her head. "I can't think what's got into him. Usually he doesn't even notice I exist."

"People do get strange at masked balls, I've noticed. Even when they know perfectly well who one is. But, of course, if we swap he won't know who you are, even if he thinks he does. And it will be much easier for me to cold-shoulder him than you, since I won't be worried about –" the Crown Princess paused for a moment and then added, carefully, "Under our law, it would be treason for him to attempt the liberties with me I suspect him of attempting with you. I could order him torn apart between four horses, you know."

The younger woman's tone put Frances in mind of Billy Richards, the magistrate's son, backed up against the pump, shouting to the village bullies that his father would have them hanged them out of hand. That affair had ended with fatherly cuffs and canings all round and no executions whatsoever. Princess or no princess, she somewhat doubted her friend's capacity to follow through on the threat – even out here, on the very edges of Europe, where the rules were changed.

"Torn apart between four horses?"

The Crown Princess shrugged. "I believe so. My great-grand aunt is supposed to have had it done, back in 1570-something. Though the punishment may have fallen into desuetude since."

Frances ran her hand over the rich black velvet and dark red brocade of the Crown Princess's dress. She had never dreamt of wearing anything half so fine. Her own pale blue looked like a peasant girl's Sunday best beside it. But if the Crown Princess seemed happy to swap, who was she to argue? And it would get rid of the pestilential Viscount.

The maid moved up closely behind her. "Ma'am? Could you raise your arms for me, ma'am?"

………

"My lady! The musicians are starting. And you promised to save this dance especially for me." Sherlock's hand in the small of her back steered her firmly through the press on the ballroom floor, towards the cleared space in the centre, leaving the Viscount crestfallen in their wake.

"Thank you," Charis murmured, as soon as they were out of his earshot. "He was becoming excessively tedious."

"That's because he's becoming excessively drunk. If he goes into the card-room in that condition he's a lamb to the slaughter. I might let John know. For the most honourable man I know, he's surprisingly ruthless at the card-table. In any event, thanks are superfluous. I particularly wish to dance this dance with you."

"But it's the Volta."

"Yes, Charis; do at least concede me the ability to recognise a dance measure by ear. The Volta could not suit my purposes better had I ordered the musicians to play it specifically."

She had been married to him for three-quarters of a year. There was a certain note in his voice she could, by now, recognise. "And did you?"

"Oh, yes."

The musicians paused, and then swept into the elaborate overture. The dancers lined up for the introductory galliard. Charis rose onto her tip-toes, poised ready.

"You know I shouldn't. Not in mourning," she murmured. "And, anyway, you –"

"Am more than capable of lifting you above my head without dropping you. Just because I don't usually choose to dance, doesn't mean I can't."

"But you _don't_ dance –"

"Not without good reason. And the good reason is currently looking at the pair of us from behind that ludicrously florid Laccoon and his sons I've been trying to persuade Mycroft to give to someone as a token of his especial esteem for the last five years."

She essayed a cautious glimpse at the slender young man in azure velvet and a gold-leaf encrusted mask part-hidden by the sculpture in question.

"Who is he?" An absurd question to ask at a masked ball, but this was Sherlock, after all. He would be bound to know.

"Someone who has spent an irritatingly long time this evening trying to offer me something in which I am not in the least interested, in exchange for something I have no intention of giving him."

Not as informative as it could be but she got the gist. One of the unexpected pleasures of wearing Frances' dress had been the protection it had afforded her from importunate petitioners. The Viscount's earlier boorishness had been a small price to pay. And, it occurred to her suddenly, wearing Frances' pale blue meant she was not, technically, in mourning. Not visibly, at any rate.

The stirring strings were getting into her feet. She wanted nothing more to let the music inhabit her, take her where it would. The overture was ending; soon they would be committed.

"So you really think it's all right? I mean, for me?"

"Not merely all right, but your bounden duty as my wife. I do recall your promising to obey me, you know. So, Charis, this is an order. Stop arguing and dance."

………

"Diana, just look what that little hussy is doing now," Crispian moaned. "I can't believe she's actually letting him – good God, just look where he's putting his _hands_."

"What were you expecting? It's the Volta," Diana said, nibbling at the inside of her mask and assuming a tone of profound boredom. The alternative – leaping up and down and screaming with pure frustration – was not to be contemplated, not least because it would tell that plain, flat-chested, dull-as-ditchwater _baggage_ exactly how profoundly she had scored.

"You can call it that, but I could name women in this town who'd call it three thaler, in gold, cash up front." Overcome with his own wit, Crispian sprayed wine out of his nose. Diana withdrew her sleeve only just in time.

"Do you have to be so disgusting? Apart from anything else, if you go spending all your money on whores, Hatherleigh will write to Papa again, like he did from Paris."

"Hatherleigh's my secretary, not my gaoler. And we're much further away from Oversbank now than we were in Paris. We could do anything, and it would take Papa months even to find out about it."

Diana looked resentfully at the dancers, to where the tall young man in the superbly cut midnight-blue doublet had lifted Frances once more aloft, his supporting hands resting amid her pale blue skirts with a careless, assured intimacy which was intolerable to witness. "Well, having her mother in the same building doesn't seem to have stopped Frances from doing what she likes, either. Perhaps Mrs Pickering thinks the only way she can get her married off is to have some man compromise her so badly he can't not marry her."

Crispian snorted. "Are you mad? Can you see Sir Hector standing over some foreigner with a horsewhip, just because he'd dishonoured Frances? Let alone challenging anyone."

The thought of podgy, fussy Sir Hector in the role of protector of virgins was suddenly overwhelmingly funny. Diana collapsed into giggles. Crispian caught up with her a second or so later.

"You know, it'd almost be worth it." Behind the mask, his eyes glittered. "He'd never dare call me out. And imagine the surprised look on Frances' face. I wonder how long it would take her to work out what had happened?"

"Dare you. No, wager you. Fifty thaler that you won't seduce Frances before we leave Gaaldine. And don't even think of cheating. I'll get at the truth, one way or the other. After all, who else has Frances got to confide her girlish troubles to, but me?"

………..

"Yes, I know, Lady Wardale, I could hardly credit it myself."

From the vicious, self-satisfied note in Lady Diana's voice the girl was plainly up to no good. As a responsible chaperone, it was her job to nip it the bud. Whatever "it" was.

Elizabeth stifled a sigh, and picked her way through the gaggle of women surrounding Lady Wardale. Lady Diana must have been aware of her approach but continued talking.

"I mean, for any lady to allow a man to dance with her in such an intimate manner, in public! I can't think what her chaperone must have been thinking."

"Whose?" Elizabeth asked. Lady Diana managed a very creditable counterfeit start.

"Oh! I hadn't realised you were here. We were talking of the shocking exhibition that girl in blue's just been making of herself. Masked balls must give rise to so many opportunities for indiscretion, wouldn't you say?"

Lady Diana swept her hand languidly towards a group on the edge of the dance-floor. With a sinking heart Elizabeth spotted the unmistakeable shade of Frances' dress. Impossible to hope Lady Diana had not recognised it – her malice was too sure and precise. And yet, while mothers were proverbially blind to acts of immorality committed by daughters apparently even more demure and biddable than Frances, there was something about this entire set-up which did not ring true.

"I missed whatever event your ladyship is talking about. Tell me more?"

Elizabeth's bored tone clearly stung the girl. "That Volta. The most shocking exhibition I've ever set eyes on; more fit for a common stews than a Palace."

"Really? A court dance?" Even more evidence in favour of Frances' innocence. Paralysing shyness and – maternal prejudice could only take one so far – the apparent possession of two left feet when presented with a dance floor meant that if Frances ever did take to lewdness, it would certainly not be in three/four time.

"They do have different standards out here," Lady Wardale said. "I didn't see the incident myself, but it sounds to have been quite shocking."

"Lady Diana has very delicate sensibilities," Elizabeth breathed. "Well, I see her ladyship's in good hands with you, Lady Wardale. If I may, I'll take a turn around the ballroom and see if I can find Frances. The country dances will be starting soon, and I need to see if she has found a suitable partner. Dear Frances is not one of the world's natural dancers, bless her."

And with that parting shot she made her way determinedly towards the patch of pale blue on the far side of the ballroom. She had no confidence that Lady Diana would take her last hint and stop mischief-making. But, plainly, whoever was wearing Frances' dress was not Frances. And, by one means or another Elizabeth was going to make that fact obvious to Lady Wardale and her set, before Lady Diana could damage Frances' reputation any further.

……….

"Mother!" Frances said with trepidation. The Crown Princess looked up to see a black-gowned figure making a determined way towards them.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Of course she's sure," the Crown Prince drawled from beside her. "Most people are better at recognising a walk or a back than they are at recognising a face. To say nothing of the dress."

"Definitely mother," Frances confirmed, and then she was upon them.

"Young man," she said without preamble, "I can quite see that these two girls may not have been thinking straight when they swapped dresses for whatever reason seemed like a good idea to them at the time, but _you_ could have used your wits before making a damaging show of yourselves in the Volta. You must have been aware that someone might recognise Frances' dress and draw the worst possible conclusions. Which at least two people are energetically doing at this very moment."

Frances writhed inwardly. Etiquette meant she should not betray the identity of any of the masked revellers. Etiquette, equally, demanded that she should make Mother aware she was in the process of rebuking the Crown Prince of Gaaldine. To complete her dilemma, her tongue seemed to have swollen to the size of a vegetable marrow and was preventing her from making any noises more coherent than a strangled squeak.

"Ah. The reason for your abrupt arrival now becomes clear," the Crown Prince said. "Lady Diana Scoton, I presume. And her brother? No, he will have gone off to the cardroom by now. Lady Wardale, then."

"You seem to be well-informed," Mother said.

"A simple process of elimination. Only a member of your party would be likely to recognise your daughter's dress and at least two members of your party are, in fact, incapable of doing so. Not that Dr Atherton is inclined to gossip in any event."

Frances suppressed a giggle.

"Of course," the Crown Prince added meditatively, "Lady Wardale's own inclinations in that direction are seriously handicapped by the fact that she has the worst memory for names of any woman I've met. She relies on her husband to help her out, but – ah – his own memory is distinctly more reliable in the forenoon than later in the day."

"I'm glad to see _you_ do not regard gossip as a purely feminine diversion," Mother said demurely. The Crown Prince laughed.

"I'd be lost without it. However, I can quite see you don't think your daughter should be its subject. The country dances are just starting. Would you object, Mrs Pickering, if I danced with your daughter?"

"Me?" Frances squeaked. Mother nodded.

"I think that will answer very well, sir."

A red tide of horror overwhelmed her; her knees felt as if they could barely hold her upright, let alone permit her to dance. "But, Mother, you know I don't – I can't –"

"That's rather the point," the Crown Prince said, just as Mother said, "My dear, modesty is all very well, but there is a time for complaisance." Each of them paused for the other to finish.

"Oh, don't be silly," the Crown Princess said unexpectedly. "This is a terribly easy one. A – a spavined _donkey_ could dance it." She gave Frances a gentle push between her shoulder-blades. "Go on, they're starting. We'll see you over by Lady Wardale."

"She's always saying that she wishes she had more opportunities to practise speaking Gaaldine." The Crown Prince's voice was sharp, malicious. "Go and give her some. We'll see you presently." He half-turned, looking away from the Crown Princess. He spoke as if addressing his words to the tapestry behind them. "Two dances in an evening. And the second one, at least, pure altruism. Don't think I'm going to make a habit of it." Her turned back to Frances and extended his hand. "Come on. As my wife says, the musicians are starting."


	4. Four Fraught Encounters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific attention is drawn to the overall series notes with regard to this chapter. Heroic quantities of brandy and overweening senses of aristocratic entitlement _really_ don't combine to produce a pleasant outcome.

"Hector –" Elizabeth gripped onto the edge of the library table for support. Even in this crisis some distant part of her brain noted the delicacy of its mother-of-pearl inlay.

"I can't discuss this now. But understand this, Elizabeth. As things stand at present my only hope of preferment lies with the Duke. I cannot come to a breach with him." Sir Hector took a lavish pinch of snuff: his invariable habit when nervous and attempting to disguise the fact. "The Duke dotes upon his daughter. If Lady Diana doesn't change her mind -"

"Such as it is," Elizabeth muttered.

"There you are, you see! You don't help yourself. You never have. If you'd only be a bit less unbending, a bit less of the drab Puritan widow, accept that Lady Diana Scoton is a high-spirited filly with the world at her feet –"

Elizabeth lost patience. "Lady Diana Scoton is a spoilt child with no more sense of morality than a feral cat. It's been a great personal struggle to resist the temptation to push her into every river from the Scheldt to the Danube. Her current troubles are entirely of her own making. If she chooses to appear at an All Souls Eve ball in a gown bright enough to make a flamingo look anaemic then she should have the backbone to carry it off whatever happens, and not fall into the vapours when some young blade with more wit than manners decides to compare her to a duck."

"Yes, and who was the young man? Don't think he's getting off scot-free insulting an English Duke's daughter in a public place, either. Once Lady Diana tells her brother, the Viscount will be sending his friends to wait upon him, and to do that he'll expect me to have the young man's name."

"Yes, it would appear to be something of a precondition, certainly. Unfortunately, masked ball, remember?" Thank God. She detested duelling and the Viscount was just the sort of hot-headed young idiot to issue a challenge on the slightest provocation.

"Foreign custom. Don't care for it. Bound to lead to trouble of exactly this sort – people thinking they can say what they like, do what they like just because they aren't prepared to put their true countenances to it. But you must remember something about him?"

"He was Frances' dancing partner. Dark hair. Spoke English without a trace of an accent and French to perfection."

"Hmph! Worse and worse. Sounds like a member of the Corps Diplomatique. God help him if he's one of our delegation. Lady Wardale will have his letters of authority revoked and he'll be on the next cargo boat back to the Port of London before you can say knife!"

"I'm glad to see, Hector, that at least you recognise who is really His Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Gaaldine. At least, from noon onwards."

Sir Hector blinked. "Before you start making fun of the Wardales, I'll remind you that Lady Diana has put herself under the baroness's chaperonage, and she is very much inclined to take the girl's part."

"She would. That's because she's a howling snob, no doubt due to the fact her grandfather was a grazier, her father a government salt-beef contractor and the ink is scarcely dry on her husband's patents of nobility."

"Irrelevant. Between Lady Wardale and Lady Diana, the Duke won't get a good account of your conduct."

"Except, of course, that he'll have the benefit of the corrective report, giving the true facts of this over-inflated farrago, filed by his master of archives and personal tutor to his son and heir, won't he, Hector?"

Before he spoke her brother had already betrayed his answer. His pasty fingers jerked convulsively on his old-gold snuff box, one of the pair the Viscount had presented to him and Hatherleigh in Paris. Further proof, if any were needed, of just how dependent Hector was on the favour of the Duke and his children.

"Elizabeth – don't make this more difficult for me than it has to be. But you must understand. You and Frances cannot remain with us while Lady Diana is irreconciled. We'll need to think of some way to get you home – perhaps there's some respectable merchant travelling to Venice or Antwerp who might be persuaded to let the two of you accompany his party that far for a small consideration –"

"Hector! And what about when we get home? Lady Diana may avoid her father's country estates as much as she pleases, but she's bound to stumble over me and Frances at Oversbank eventually."

"Ah. Yes. I was coming to that." Impossibly, her brother's air of shiftiness had increased.

Her entire insides lurched. "Hector, you cannot possibly mean –"

"I've been thinking that the two of you really have been with me for a very long time now. And while that was all fine and good while I was Master of St Jerome's – delightful, in fact – the grace-and-favour apartment the Duke allots me – while ample for a single man – is more than a little cramped with the three of us. You – and especially Frances – need a bit more space to turn round in. What about those cousins of your husband's in the North parts – Robin Hood's Bay, wasn't it, or Whitby?"

"You mean the Sutcliffes?" she said faintly. "You think I – Frances and I – should seek a home with the _Sutcliffes_?"

Gentlemen farmers in the wilds of Yorkshire without a thought in their heads beside livestock prices and ale. And while Frances probably wouldn't mind living in those backwaters too badly, if only there were birds to watch and plants to collect, she, personally, would go mad with boredom inside a month.

Sir Hector nodded. "Very suitable. I'll write them in the morning. I'm sure Lord Wardale will frank it for us and send it with the rest of his dispatches. Well, that's settled. Go back to the ball and enjoy yourself for once, since you aren't needed as a chaperone any more. Lady Diana is under Lady Wardale's care, now, and Frances is more than old enough to look after herself – after all, it's not as if any young nobleman's likely to ravish her, is he?"

So many possible things to say to him tumbled over themselves in her mouth that by the time she managed to get her thoughts in order he had made good his escape. She laid her arms along the library shelving, dropped her head against them and let her tears leak out into the sleeves of her black gown. The feel of the fabric against her face triggered a reminder. Drab Puritan widow indeed! Her husband had fought for Parliament, yes, but from fury at Charles Stuart's venality and incompetence, his reliance on moneyed favourites above good governance and sound counsel. The creeping cold fanaticism of the Commonwealth had betrayed her husband's sacrifice and sucked the heart out of him.

Elizabeth raised her head from her arms, wiping her eyes dry with the back of her hand. James Pickering had been no Puritan and nor was his relict. Her brother was no doubt expecting her to crawl back to their lodgings and lick her wounds, his suggestion that she stay and enjoy herself nothing more than a sop to what must, surely, be an uneasy conscience.

But – why not, after all? She was in a palace, guest at a King's ball. If the rest of her life held nothing more than working her fingers to the bone as an unpaid skivvy in some remote farmhouse, then by God and all his angels she'd take some memories back with her. England was over a thousand miles away; only a handful of people knew her here and she respected the good opinion of only two of those.

She strode to the looking glass above the fireplace, straightened her hair and made sure not a trace of her recent tears showed on her cheeks. Then she stiffened her spine and threw her shoulders back.

"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall be in Yorkshire," she said aloud, and laughed. Her reflection laughed back at her.

There came a faint, audible rustle, from the gallery which ran round the upper level of the library. She tipped her head back, just in time to see an unmistakeable figure whisking out of sight through a little door she had not, previously, realised was there.

Dr Atherton. Despite his protestations, it seemed he'd come to the ball after all – though, having done so, it was entirely characteristic that he'd chosen to bury himself out of sight in the library.

And, assuming he hadn't been engrossed in some rare tome – a far from unlikely prospect – he must have heard her entire argument with Hector. How would she ever manage to look him in the face after that?

"With the help of a very large glass of Angrian red," she told herself, and made determined tracks for the principal ballroom.

…………

"You damnable swine. Just what the hell do you think you've been playing at all evening?"

(Christ, the petulant twist to his full red lips.)

"You never used to be this unsophisticated when we were at Oxford. Has travel narrowed your mind? Or the Palace wine fuddled your wits?" (It had certainly created a delicious flush over those sharp cheek-bones.)

"Not more than it's evidently fuddled yours. Could you have made it clearer you were making yourself available to the Crown Prince if you'd been kneeling on the floor with your tongue hanging out?"

"Coarse words." (Reproach, not anger had always been the key to managing him at Oxford.)

"Coarser deeds."

"Necessary deeds. The Crown Prince may profess to admire subtlety, but he hardly displays it when it comes to his preferences." (And hadn't that point been proved tonight?)

"So that's where your lofty ambitions have ended? Trading everything we once talked about on the chance of becoming a foreign princeling's catamite?"

"Don't delude yourself I want that." (God, how much he wanted it.) "But great rewards demand commensurate sacrifices. I'm playing a long game, in both our interests. And not unsuccessfully. Did you see the formal dances?"

"No. I was in the cardroom. Also playing a long game. Losing a small sum I expect to recoup ten-fold before the evening is out."

(Milking the Viscount, evidently. Good. A loan now could come in handy. Pursuing a prince was an expensive business. That damnable tailor and his bill for the azure doublet.)

"Then you missed the Crown Prince dancing the Volta – bear in mind, the Crown Prince never dances – with some little nobody. Hands up between her legs and all but ravishing her on the dance floor." (An exhibition of leaping, untamed power and sensuality, aimed straight at his groin.)

"Who was she?"

"Who cares? Some little tart with ambitions, connections and no money. These affairs are stuffed with them. Court manners, but dressed like a provincial merchant's daughter at the Tallowchandlers' Ball."

"And you call that 'not unsuccessful'?"

(Odd how that hint of scepticism stung.)

"It's rather late, wouldn't you say, for him to discover an inclination to the fair sex? 'Specially since rumour has it he's not got it up with his own wife in over nine months of marriage. No; that pointed display of uninterest was addressed to me."

 

"Assume you have piqued his interest. Hell, why not go the whole way? Assume one of the Palace servants taps you on the shoulder later this evening with a discreet invitation to the Prince's private quarters. What then? Where do 'we' come into it?"

(A fool, but not an utter fool. Best to play this cannily. A show of candour, like gold spread over pebbles.)

"Do you seriously consider things at home are stable? When James Stuart falls, I want to find myself sitting pretty on top of the wreckage, and not by risking my neck and guts by backing another Monmouth, either."

"Ssh. That time still gives me nightmares. James Stuart's seat might be shaky, but his reach remains long. There's times I've wondered if his spies are watching, even out here."

"You always were given to frights and fancies. I see you've not changed in that, at least."

"You'd be surprised how little I've changed."

(Promising. Soft library lamplight on tousled dark hair; what memories that evoked. This evening might end even better than he'd hoped.)

"I may ask you to show me, later. Anyway, Wardale may be James's man through and through, but he's up to his neck in local intrigue. Though if he ever sobered up long enough to put two and two together he might realise that not all of the dispatches he thinks are from His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to Gondal have ever crossed the border."

"So? Why don't you report him?"

"And risk having him replaced by a competent man, who'd be less easy to manage? Not until I can be sure of securing the Legation for myself. Which means, not until Father's back in favour at home. When the time is ripe, I can have Wardale given his congé by the Gaaldines quick enough. But to be sure of springing my trap effectively, I need friends in high places."

"I see. Hence your plan to whore yourself out to the Crown Prince."

"Jealous?" (No need to ask.)

"Of that supercilious pasty-faced princeling? What do you think to take me for?"

(Time to play his last, best card.) "Anything you're offering. Since you ask."

"What, tonight? Here? With half of the nobility of Gaaldine prowling the other side of the library door? Are you mad?"

"For you, yes. And you?"

"God, yes."

" _Yes._ "

………..

Surprisingly, given the clemency of the night (Elizabeth spared a thought for what Yorkshire would be like at this time of year, and shuddered) the terrace was deserted apart from Dr Atherton. He leaned on the marble balustrade at the far end of the terrace, looking out into the garden, a glass of red wine virtually untouched by his hand. Probably he'd been distracted by the cry of some unfamiliar bird.

Seeing him – knowing he'd overheard her and Hector in the library, so that he was the one person in the whole place to whom she could speak without its being a breach of anyone's confidence – crystallised a resolution she had not been conscious of forming.

She strode down the length of the terrace. "Dr Atherton! Can you tell me where to find Hector? I must settle this business tonight; I can't let just leave it. If it were just me, it would be one thing, but there's Frances to consider."

He turned. Something about his stance alerted her to something wrong even before – in breach of the etiquette that faces were not to be uncovered before the signal was given – he swept off the velvet mask he wore to reveal the face of a stranger.

One, admittedly, who bore a startling resemblance to Dr Atherton, but a more intense, a more vivid, a more alive Dr Atherton. Next to this man Dr Atherton would look like a watercolour portrait across which someone had swept a wet sponge, causing outlines to blur and colours to bleed into one another.

"I regret," he said in precise but faintly accented English, "that I am not the man you seek. I can, however, tell you where your brother is, Mrs Pickering. He is in the card room, progressively losing both his money and his temper."

It seemed both pointless and rude to retain her own mask, in the circumstances. She removed it.

"I really am very, very sorry," she said.

"Surely, apologising for misrecognising someone at a masked ball goes rather beyond the strictest requirements of _politesse_?"

He sounded amused, but she sensed a reserve beneath his amusement, which warned her not to press the point. Still –

She sank down into a deep curtsey.

"Elizabeth Pickering, sir. I am most honoured to make your acquaintance."

He contemplated her for a moment, then bowed in return. "Regrettably, my family saddled me with numerous names, most of which strangers to this country find difficult, for one reason or another. The Count d'Houx is probably simplest, for present purposes. A small castle and quite dreadfully draughty, but I'm fond of it."

Typical, of course, that she'd managed to involve a foreign aristocrat in her gaffe. Though it was a Palace ball; probably the number of plain "Mr"s present could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

"Ma'am, might I take the appalling liberty of offering some advice?" the Count enquired. "I, too, am afflicted with a brother. When you spoke to me a few minutes ago, under the misapprehension that I was Dr Atherton, you indicated that you proposed to resolve something with Sir Hector tonight. Is it fair to assume that you and your brother are currently at odds, about a matter of some considerable importance to you and your daughter?"

She hesitated, but detected nothing but sympathetic interest in his warm brown eyes.

"You could say so." Family loyalty pressed her to add, "It's not Hector's fault. Not really."

His lips curled, mischievously. "A fatally flawed admission, ma'am. Once we start conceding that our respective siblings may 'have a point', may be, however partially, 'in the right' then we are lost, utterly. Especially since I am quite convinced that Sir Hector would not dream of making the converse concession."

"He would not," Elizabeth said drily, before she could stop herself.

"Nor mine, neither. So, for the purpose of the current _exemplum_ , let us take it as a given that your brother is completely, utterly and without any shadow of a doubt in the wrong. Let us also take as a given that if he proceeds in his current course it will cause irreparable harm."

Elizabeth stifled a sob. His summary might be hypothetical but it was all too accurate. Fortunately, he appeared to have noticed nothing. His mellifluous tones continued.

"There will be a part of his brain – heart – conscience which recognises that point. However, if you resume your argument this evening, it will push him into silencing that part. Only if you leave him until the first glow of resolution has started to fade and his qualms become louder do you have a chance of him letting his better part speak. And you only have a hope of winning if you allow him to believe that any change of heart is entirely his own idea."

"And does this work, when you are at odds with your own brother?"

The Count looked faintly sheepish. "Ah. Well. To be perfectly honest, it's something I – ah – hitherto have lacked the patience to put into practice with him. But it doesn't stop it being excellent advice."

Elizabeth couldn't help it. The giggles forced themselves out of her. After a moment, the Count joined in. When they were more collected, she observed, "You speak English extremely well. Do you have family there? Have you visited?"

"Alas, no." He paused for a moment. "Neither. Though my uncle was rumoured to have left his heart in your country in his youth. He fought besides Prince Rupert, in your civil war."

"Oh." Elizabeth felt the familiar cold dread beneath her breast. So often this came up; less now, of course, as she aged and the previous generation died off. "He may have fought against my late husband. He was for Parliament."

The Count contemplated that for a moment. His voice was surprisingly gentle when he spoke again. "It is one of the greatest tragedies a country can suffer, a civil war. So often, one ends up liking many of the other side far better than one's own allies." He paused. "Your husband's party were too honourable. They should have engaged an assassin."

Elizabeth found herself almost unable to comment, certainly not with the appropriate tone of shocked horror.

"You think so?" she managed to choke out.

"But of course. The other countries of Europe would have found assassination far more palatable. To kill a king by a knife in the dark or an arrow from a distance is part of the natural order of things. That a nation should rise up and tell its monarch first to leave and then submit him to the forms of law when he does not –" He shrugged, eloquently. "One cannot change the past, however. "

Changing the subject, clearly, was another matter. After a brief pause, the Count said, "My likeness to Dr Atherton has been remarked on before."

"Really? By whom?"

"My brother, who else? He found the discovery irresistibly funny. He's been a correspondent of Dr Atherton for many years, and insisted on visiting him the morning after your party arrived in the capital."

"Oh, is your brother the rather odd one, with the dead dog?" Undoubtedly the Angrian red talking; her face flamed. Her companion's laugh, though, was as rich and warming as spiced ale on a winter's night.

"I have waited over thirty years for someone to describe him with such accuracy and economy of expression." He waved a hand and a servitor appeared, instantly, at his elbow. "Shall we drink confusion to our respective siblings?"

No doubt it was a sign that she had already been shamefully over-indulgent, but the wine seemed to have improved immeasurably in flavour, though it had hardly been lacking before.

"Not bad," the Count said judiciously. "I trust it is to your taste? Good. Would you care for a turn around the grounds? There are particularly fine views of the night sky from the belvedere over there."

Elizabeth hesitated for a moment. Hector, of course, would be horrified at the bare idea that she might consider heading out into the dark unknown of the Palace grounds with a foreign aristocrat whom she had just met and about whom she knew very little indeed. Though, judging by his dismissive remark about Frances' attractions, he would hardly assume Elizabeth to be an object of prey even to the most depraved Count in Eastern Europe. _Even you, Hector, cannot hold two opinions of equal and opposite unreasonableness._

Of course, quite clearly the Count d'Houx – who was by no means depraved - had no intentions of that sort. Which was something which she, as a respectable widow (though not, in any sense, a Puritan) should only be glad of. He no doubt had a grown-up daughter with an unsuitable suitor or his (clearly feckless) brother was planning on sinking funds into one of Dr Atherton's antiquarian schemes. During the course of the walk through the grounds he would broach the topic (whatever it was) and she would give her opinion and advice. She should be delighted to Be Of Use.

So why did misery claw at her heart, then?

"You are worried about becoming chilled? I understand that fires are often lit in the belvedere on evenings such as this, for the convenience of those who wish for solitude and the chance to observe the stars away from the Palace's lights."

A servitor was at her elbow, holding out a wrap which was far finer than any clothing she actually possessed; another was helping the Count into a fur-lined cloak which seemed in her estimation more suitable for a winter's carriage ride than a stroll on a warm autumn night. Doubtless living in climes such as these tended to thin the blood.

A cynical part of her mind reflected on how the addition of a title to a man's name improved the quality of the service he received. Only a small part, though.

"No," Elizabeth heard herself saying, as if the voice was that of a stranger. "I do not fear the cold. A turn about the grounds would be delightful, sir."

……….

"Sir, you cannot – you cannot mean to – Stop this at once!"

He showed no signs of hearing her protests, let alone understanding them. Two beefy arms locked around her body, almost crushing her, forcing her back against the wall, into the corner by one of the smaller staircases.

 _Torn apart between four horses._

How hollow that threat sounded now! God! he was strong. Rough, raw fumes of brandy poured over her with his every panting breath, but the drink seemed only to have inflamed him, not slowed him down one whit.

"You've no idea what you're doing. Let me go!"

No help in sight; he had timed his ambush well. Most of the guests were in the buffet rooms, piling into the lavish late supper served before the unmasking at midnight. The dedicated card-players would barely have started the serious business of the night. The dancers were taking last opportunities to swing unsuitable partners around the floor, relying on the thin protection of their masks against any later charges of impropriety.

Charis cast the last shreds of dignity to the winds. "You whoreson English bastard, get your filthy hands off me!"

His hand covered her mouth, brutally obstructing her breathing. She bit down, hard, but the muffling folds of her mask prevented her doing any real damage. He growled, something deep, low and menacing in his barbarous tongue and pinned her against the wall with his hips.

Despite the hampering skirts of her gown, she hooked a foot around his ankle and thrust him momentarily off-balance. She broke from his grip with a thunderous tearing of fabric. Only two steps, though; he caught her and brought her crashing to the marble floor; he was on top of her, the damaged gown was slipping, revealing her breasts, his full weight pressing her down, his breath hot in her face, his hands busy amid her skirts –

Abruptly, his weight was dragged from her body.

"I don't think the lady welcomes your attentions." A blessedly familiar voice - though her fear-addled brain for a moment had difficulty in putting a name to it. She rolled onto her side in a feeble attempt to conceal her naked flesh.

Out of her line of vision, the Viscount snarled something incoherent. And half-choked; her rescuer clearly had him firmly by the throat.

"You'd be better off for some fresh air. And a lesson in manners, though I doubt yours can be cured at this late stage."

Comprehension, relief and terror came together in one blinding flash. John. She whimpered into her blessedly concealing mask. Rescue, yes, and John, dear John would know she was the injured party here. But – what would Palace gossip make of the story? She, the ranking lady at court, found sprawled beneath an English nobleman in a dark corner at a ball, all but naked to the waist. Dear God, what would _Sherlock_ make of it? Cold sweat broke out on her spine. She had boasted to Frances of the great-grand aunt who had had the man who insulted her torn apart, but that very woman had ended her days raving in her husband's dungeon, following his surprising her in a compromising position with one of his armsmen.

"I'm taking him outside – I assure you he'll not trouble you further, ma'am. Shall I send one of the Palace maids to assist you?'

She shook her head vigorously. If she could only get up to her own suite and change into something suitable in time to appear in the ballroom for the unmasking no-one except her own confidential maid – not Sherlock, not John and especially not the loathsome Viscount – need ever know she'd been here.

John, bless him, didn't argue. He glared at the Viscount. "Sir, your behaviour is an insult to this Palace and to your host the King, as well as to this lady. You are clearly in no fit state now to appreciate the enormity of your actions but I invite you to reflect on them overnight."

Although the Viscount must have had half a foot on John in height, he went like a lamb, possibly due to the position of John's thumbs. Charis picked herself up from the floor, wrapped the wreckage of Frances' dress around herself as best she could, and made her shaky way upstairs.


	5. Five Crucial Clues

The Palace grounds were aromatic with the mingled scents of wild herbs and cultivated flowers. The breeze blew warm and the moon – three days past the full – hung orange above the cliff opposite, lighting their steps as effectively as if they'd brought a link-boy.

"This is beautiful," Elizabeth said. "Thank you for accompanying me."

"The thanks are all mine." The Count hesitated. "It is a painful All Souls Eve for me, but I welcome your presence very much. Neither solitude nor incompatible company would be supportable, tonight."

Ah. Mourning. That would be it.

"You have recently lost someone, sir?"

He paused, then spoke with great precision. "The person I am thinking of I lost many years ago. But I learned of her death mere weeks ago. The wound is – a new cut into an old scar. And the old wound had not healed as thoroughly as I had deluded myself."

"I do not mean to pry. But if you wish to speak of it, I am a discreet ear. And, if this assists, one unlikely to be in Gaaldine for much longer."

"Really? I expected your party to winter here. You are very late for travelling back to England."

She strove for a neutral tone. "I am unsure of the party's plans in general. Frances and I are not to remain with them. Lady Diana does not wish it."

"I see. That, I take it, is what set you and your brother at odds."

"Sir, I do not –"

"Like yourself, ma'am, I can be a discreet ear at need. Tell me your troubles."

For a moment she was irresistibly tempted. But then, suppose he took Lady Diana's part? The nobility, even if foreign nobility, were a clannish lot.

"It is nothing, sir, thank you."

"Indeed it is not, ma'am. At the least, it leaves you parted from your companions fourteen hundred miles from your home and with no certainty as to when or how you will see that home again."

For a moment Elizabeth thought of Oxford and felt a deep pang. Damn Hector and whatever murky business had driven them from St Jerome's. Oversbank, whose elegant façade concealed multiple petty rivalries and diabolical drains – worse, by far, than many they had encountered on their travels – that had never been home, and if the alternative were anyone but the Sutcliffes she would be pleased to see the back of it forever.

The Count nodded. "Ah. I see. An incompatible home but one which has, at least the merit of security. Still, no small matter. I take it the Scoton child already bore a grievance against you before your party entered the ball-room?"

"Six month's worth of grievances," Elizabeth said with feeling. "This evening – or, to be precise, this afternoon – merely put the coping-stone on them."

"This afternoon. Oh, I see. She had earlier objected to your – entirely proper – efforts as her chaperone to prevent her making herself look ridiculous – to prevent, in fact, the very situation which arose."

Elizabeth gulped. How much of the events in the ball-room had this man seen, and why had she not remarked his watching them?

The Count smiled ruefully. "I should, incidentally, apologise on my brother's behalf for his part in the disaster. Especially as I'm certain he has not the slightest intention of doing so himself."

"Your brother was Frances' dancing partner, sir? I had not an idea of it, but I should have recognised his voice, from his call on Dr Atherton."

"You were probably too horrified at what he was saying in it. Comparing Lady Diana to a duck may have had accuracy on its side – that particular style was introduced at Versailles by the French King's _maîtresse en titre_ , who has five inches of height, twenty-six years of age and an infinity of sophistication over the Scoton girl. It did, however, succeed in making a bad situation infinitely worse."

"Nevertheless," Elizabeth said, motivated by an obscure desire to be fair to all parties, "I am very obliged to him for showing Lady Diana not only that Frances had not danced the Volta with him, she _could_ not have done so."

"A fact that malicious chit should have realised before she started spreading her poison. We start being taught those dances at three. You are quite right; it is a point I should acknowledge." He paused, and added, thoughtfully, "You know, something seems to be humanising him? A year ago, should a similar set of circumstances have arisen, he would undoubtedly have danced the Volta, but would not have felt any obligation to protect a random English girl whose reputation he had damaged in the process."

"Excuse me, sir, if the question seems an over-familiar one, but did the two of you by any chance have the misfortune to lose your parents when you were young?"

He stopped walking, and turned to look at her. "That is either very perceptive or a lucky guess on your part, ma'am. Both were dead by the time I was twelve – five, in my brother's case. He always – "

As the pause threatened to become prolonged, Elizabeth prompted gently, "You believe, perhaps, he envied your having more memories of them? I have known that, from the youngest members of a family towards the elders in such circumstances."

"You know, he told me once he could not remember our mother's face." There was something unutterably wistful in his tone. "There are, of course, portraits, but the style of the era was stiff and formalised. None of them capture her likeness. I was furious with him at the time – the details are unimportant – so I missed the chance to say what I should have said, and have never had it renewed."

"That being, sir?"

"That he should look in the glass."

"There is another thing, sir, I have noted about children who lose their parents young," Elizabeth said. "They often find it difficult to believe in the reality of their being loved by anyone."

"You are an extraordinary woman," the Count said. "That is a profound truth. Though I think, in my brother's case, he has recently begun to have a perception of it. His situation is peculiar, but I find numerous points of hope in it."

Elizabeth had had the Count in mind, not his brother. She felt loneliness shrouding the man like a second cloak.

"I do not often find myself in a position where I have either the inclination or the opportunity to share personal confidences," he said, echoing her thoughts. "Your patience and insight have brought a profound easing of my spirit."

"Thank you, sir. But it has required no patience. I am honoured by the trust you have placed in me."

"If you allow me, then, I shall continue to trespass on your sympathy a little longer. As I hinted earlier, I had the misfortune, many years ago, to become estranged from one whom I loved very dearly. It was entirely my fault. I took what I believed to be the prudent course – it's my besetting sin, ma'am – and it all but destroyed her."

"You allowed yourself to be persuaded out of a betrothal?" Elizabeth hazarded.

"On the contrary. I married her."

Elizabeth caught her breath at the pain in his voice.

"She bore children – twin boys – and a summer fever took them before their second birthday. Since that day, she refused to see me. I could – of course – have ordered barred doors battered down and had her brought forcibly into my presence. I assure you, a husband who finds himself in such circumstances does not lack for advice to do precisely that."

She winced.

"I agree with you, ma'am. In any event, I lost the woman I loved on the day I took her to the altar. We should never have married. Our love was not of that kind and could not survive the change in our relations. My so-called prudence left me an alchemist who had succeeded in turning gold into lead."

"You do not strike me, sir, as a man who would follow the course of common prudence without imagination or sensitivity to the consequences for others." The contrast with Hector lent a note of bitterness to Elizabeth's voice. "The forces urging you to that course must have been powerful indeed."

He turned to her. "Ma'am, that is the third time this evening your insight has astonished me. Yes. My grandfather insisted on the match and crossing his will would have been – extremely unpleasant. For both of us."

Elizabeth could not help feeling that the word the Count had originally intended to use was "dangerous". Or perhaps, "fatal".

"And, sir, you must have been very young at the time?"

"Twenty-two. Old enough. My brother made that quite clear. On the next occasion we met – it was two years later; he had been out of the country at the time of my marriage – he told me directly that, placed in my position, he would have died rather than make the choice I did."

Elizabeth snorted. "Easy enough words to say, sir. Especially for a – what would he have been? A seventeen-year old boy."

The Count sighed. "Ma'am, I have tried with greater or lesser success to delude myself about many things about that period in my life. But I never doubted the truth of the words he spoke. He had already given me sufficient proof that he would, if put to it, die for a principle. The contrast between his courage and my cowardice has lain between us ever since."

She shivered, despite the wrap and the clemency of the night. All Souls Eve indeed; the ghosts were undoubtedly present.

"Only a little further down this path, ma'am. And I can smell woodsmoke. They _have_ lit the fire in the belvedere."

The change of subject signalled, to Elizabeth's careful ear, the shutting of a door. The Count had stepped extraordinarily far out of the bounds of convention and might, perhaps, be regretting it. She would not increase his pain by trespassing any further. She made her voice lighter.

"Well, then, sir, by all means let us take advantage of it. For it remains a most glorious night, and I cannot think of any company I would prefer to share it with."

……….

The slam of the closet door cut off Frances' protesting whimpers. She deserved it. This was the worst evening of Diana's entire life and someone, somewhere, was going to _pay_.

That damned dress! All her troubles that evening had stemmed from it. She'd have enjoyed far greater success at the ball if she hadn't had her nerves upset and her poise ruined by that ridiculous argument in the lodgings about what colours were suitable for an All Souls Eve ball in some forgotten little backwater that called itself a kingdom. All Souls Eve! As if the very name didn't show what an uncivilised, hag-ridden, papist-infested country this was.

Of course, that frump Pickering couldn't be satisfied with letting her have the last word. She must think Diana was stupid, not to see through that utterly shameless set-up. That arrogant young man, Frances' dancing partner, so clearly primed by the widow Pickering deliberately to insult her taste, hiding his impertinence behind one of these damnable masks. And then, the final straw, the appearance on the scene of that obnoxious tall brunette. Someone from the Court, obviously, someone of importance judging by the susurration which had run round the ballroom on her insolently late arrival. Not merely an arrival, but a triumphal entrance, almost as if specifically planned to point up the fact she was wearing the exact same dress as Diana. At least, the same model but in styled layers of white and purplish black which brought to mind a magpie's plumage, rather than that of –

 _A mandarin duck. After a particularly successful moult._

The precise, drawling intonation Frances' dance partner had used about the colour scheme of her own dress intruded past Diana's best efforts to shut it out. She stamped her foot. Who did that young man think he was, anyway? And as for Frances - she deserved to be left with the thing. If she could manage to dress herself in it. If not – well, let her escape in her underclothes to find help. Or stay in there until morning to be found by the Palace maids.

At least Diana was now dressed in Frances' borrowed finery and no longer at risk of invidious comparisons to the elegant brunette. She smoothed down the layers of black velvet and dark red brocade and allowed herself a moment's satisfaction before the true miseries of her position intruded once more.

Telling that interfering hag Elizabeth Pickering where she got off had been satisfying, so long as it lasted, but Lady Wardale was so fawning, so helpless, and – a point Diana had not, fully, appreciated at the time – rooted to her husband's side in this Godforsaken foreign hole, at least until King James chose to recall him.

Diana had only the haziest gasp of politics, but she was, dimly, aware that Papa would not be best pleased that she'd thrown in her lot with the Wardales. She'd heard him be scathing often enough about the sorts of people the new King had chosen to ennoble, and the Wardales, so far as she could tell, exemplified the breed.

Worst of all, if she didn't do something, she'd be stuck with them all winter. Despite the deceptive warmth of the evening the weather was, she was told, due to break, with wild winter storms and the roads choked with mud and wolves and bandits venturing down from the mountains to make travelling, especially for ladies, dangerous and difficult.

An entire winter in this uncivilised hole, with disgusting, oily, garlic-laden food, holed up with the Wardales. The prospect was not to be borne. Something had to be done.

Damn, there _was_ the Wardale woman, fussing along the corridor, plainly looking for Diana. And, while she hadn't spotted her yet, when she did she was bound to recognise her dress as the one Frances had been wearing. And the storm of gossip which would envelop her once Lady Wardale realised she'd swapped dresses – oh, never while she had breath in her body could she endure that!

On the instant, Diana caught at the nearest door-handle, turned it, and, heedless of what lay of the far side of the door, dived through into sanctuary.

The library. Bays of dark, carved wood shelves bearing utterly uninteresting leather bound tomes – much like Oversbank, from what Diana could recall, though – annoyingly – significantly bigger. Unlike the glittering ballroom outside the lights in here were subdued; anyone attempting to read by them would be hard pressed.

She stole through the dim room. Best to lurk here until Lady Wardale was well clear of the vicinity. As she approached the end bay, though, sounds started to become audible. Unmistakeable sounds, at least for a sharp-eared girl brought up at Oversbank, with its crowds of man- and maid-servants. Harsh, rapid, irregular breathing; the rustle of fabric; the rhythmic slam of a body against a wall. And then, a voice, breathy and urgent.

"Oh, God, yes. Yes. You've no idea what you do to me. It's been so long. I've missed you so badly. Oh, God, I –"

The shock of recognition hit her like a blow. Soundlessly, she withdrew into the darkest corner of the penultimate bay, a broad smile spreading across her face.

She had worried about how she would get out of the Wardale mess. Now Fate had given a weapon into her hand. The lovers would separate after their tryst, of course. One would leave and the other remain and she would make her plans accordingly. It little mattered which of them left first – she was effectively invisible here, in her dark gown and mask, at least until she chose to show herself. But, whether here or outside, she would corner her prey and then she would drive her bargain.

"I know a secret. Here's what you must do for me, if I am not to tell."

……

 

From some inner recesses within the fur-lined cloak the Count produced a bottle of the superb Palace red wine – previously opened but the cork pushed roughly back – and a pair of crystal glasses and set them down on the belvedere's low hearth-side table. True to his promise, a fire of aromatic logs – cherry-wood, she thought, or some similar tree – blazed in the hearth.

"I always have the greatest possible respect for those rare men who are capable of forethought," Elizabeth said, "but you are clearly the very Platonic ideal of the forward planner."

"My English is very serviceable for most purposes but I cannot always – Mrs Pickering, are you mocking me?"

His lips curved in a smile, but Elizabeth recalled his earlier vulnerability and hastened to reassure him.

"Only in the smallest possible degree – and mocking myself, as much as you. To be honest, I am enchanted. A fire, the glorious stars, refreshment – even a nightingale singing from that bush over there –"

"Technically, I believe it may be a bulbul. The song differs slightly."

"I see that you bear more than a superficial resemblance to our Dr Atherton. In any event, what I meant to convey is that this is an evening of my life which I shall treasure for so long as memory lasts to me. I confess, I had few expectations of this evening beyond hoping that my daughter enjoyed herself. I find myself – this is something unlooked for –"

Damn! The tears prickled behind her eyes. Memories of this night would follow her into her Yorkshire exile and recalling its sweetness amid that bitter desert would tear her in two. The breath of that future misery still had power to chill her.

"Tonight is precious for me, also," the Count said. His hand strayed up to caress her cheek. Elizabeth was conscious that propriety required her to demand he remove it but it had been so long since anyone had –

 _Be a bit less unbending, a bit less of the drab Puritan widow,_ Hector had advised her. Well, let her take her brother's advice for once! She exhaled. The tentative fingers became more assured.

"Listen, forget tomorrow," the Count said. "Many things may happen to improve your affairs. One of them will have happened already. You never had a hope of persuading the Scoton girl not to wear that ridiculous dress, but have you never noticed that a burnt finger teaches a child far more effectively than a voice saying, 'Do not put your finger in the candle-flame'?"

"Your meaning, sir?"

He smiled. "A certain lady, a personage of importance – Court gossip rumours her to be the King's mistress but is, in this case, inaccurate – should by now have arrived at the ball. Her eye for colour is impeccable and she has the poise and figure to carry off that particular dress to perfection. The Scoton girl is quite remarkably stupid but even she will by now be appreciating fully the ignominy of the contrast and – let us hope – the wisdom of your earlier advice."

"Oh," Elizabeth breathed. Joy pervaded her body, spreading down into her finger-ends.

"Ah. I am glad to see, ma'am, that you are not above savouring the pleasures of revenge." He took her hand. "Sit with me, before the fire."

He spread the fur-lined cloak before the hearth and gestured. She sank down, her skirts pooling about her feet. She shifted them sideways, to allow space for him to sit beside her. He poured wine for them both and set the bottle down beside the log box.

"Affairs, crises, the clash of personalities who cannot abide each other and yet have to be yoked in tandem for business to proceed – sometimes my life seems an endless storm-tossed ocean, with never a glimpse of land. I do so long for peace. You carry calm within yourself, you know; your companions are trebly fools not to know what a rare jewel –"

Emotion overcame him, he stuttered to an awkward pause, looking down at his hands. A moment's exasperation seized her. Men! How on earth had the human race managed to last this long when men – for all their predatory reputation – were so completely incompetent at either making their wishes known or acting on them?

"Sir, we are in danger of drowning in words. At risk of seeming unduly forward –" She wavered for a second, but there was something about his face – something lost and yet hoping – that pushed her over the edge. She caught his chin and pulled his face down to hers.

"If you wish it, tonight I am yours," she whispered.

"Oh, my dear, yes of course I wish it. More than words can possibly express."

"Then, sir, I suggest you try actions, not words."

And that, she reflected later, was not only the best advice she had ever given but – a rarity in her experience – advice taken as fully as even she could desire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ This is a mandarin duck after a particularly successful moult .](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=mandarin+duck&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=rvj&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=F87fTsb6NZGXhQey9vijBQ&ved=0CFkQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=569)   
> 
> 
> And [ this ](http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=adr&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&biw=1366&bih=569&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=DQ6KxxclukYrqM:&imgrefurl=http://harmonyhistorica.chezblog.com/XVII%252B%25E8me%252Bsi%25E8cle/&docid=ko7RMwroB-FPtM&imgurl=http://i14.tinypic.com/2nt91g1.jpg&w=340&h=453&ei=-SL8TqOqBYS3hQeD7aGHBQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=366&sig=117883441230314670085&page=5&tbnh=161&tbnw=141&start=73&ndsp=14&ved=1t:429,r:10,s:73&tx=93&ty=42) is the French king's mistress at the relevant date. (I am indebted to Shezan for the latter image)


	6. Six Shifty Suspects

Something had happened.

When he'd been little, he'd imagined the Palace as a dragon out of one of the bestiaries in the library; huge, glittering and never, ever, wholly asleep. Like a dragon, too, it nursed poisonous fire within its belly, which belched forth at intervals with destructive and unpredictable force.

One might master a dragon, but never tame it. And, if one aspired to be a dragon-master, one needed to be constantly alert to the smallest shift in mood, the tiniest flex of muscle, the blinking of an eye.

Something had happened. There had been several of the discreet, dark-garbed men of the Palace guard circulating among the guests in the room a quarter turn ago; now they had all vanished. _All exits from the Palace are to be secured before an alert can be given._

He made a glib excuse to the French Ambassador, who'd been angling for more details of the Alwentdale affair (why? Had the Pretender managed to embroil one of the major powers of Europe in the sea-wolf raid and was the Ambassador wondering if he knew? Or were the French positioning themselves to promote or suppress one of the potential marriage alliances Genia's death had opened up for Gaaldine?) and left the room.

Jonathan came out of the shadows to meet him before he was five paces over the threshold. Good initiative on the man's part; bad that it needed to be deployed.

"Where? What's happened?"

"Library, sir. They've found a body."

"Who found it?"

"Dunno, sir. One of servants, most like. But it's her grace's physician who's giving the orders at the moment." Jonathan hesitated and said, very carefully, "He told us to find the King. Or the Head of Palace security."

"Dimmock's still on sick leave. Gregson's on duty tonight," he said, automatically, and then., " _John_ told you to find Mycroft?"

He took the stairs two and three at a time. The library blazed with the light of every lamp which could have been commandeered at short notice. As Sherlock strode in, John jerked up his head at the slam of the double doors. The expression on his face, like a carving on a rood screen depicting the torments of the damned – no power on earth or under it should have been able to make John look like that. So, by the bitter, inevitable workings of logic, he knew whose body must lie behind him.

John's voice sounded like nothing human. "Sherlock, stay back."

"Why?" His own voice was barely above a whisper, his stride almost a stroll as he walked down the full length of the library to where John crouched, like a dog guarding the dark bulk of the body on the floor behind him. "Where else should I be but here? Show me."

For a moment John paused, as if prepared physically to bar his passage. Sherlock put all the force he could command into his voice, though he did not raise its volume. "John. You've already, I suspect, confirmed one particularly pervasive court rumour tonight. Don't try to make it two. _Let me look._ "

Reluctantly, John moved aside, to reveal the sprawled figure on the floor behind him, its skirts pooling around where it lay.

 _Black velvet and red brocade._

He dropped to his knees. The corpse's mask – one of those soft, velvet affairs – lay against the base of a bookcase some feet away (thrown aside by the murderer? Or had the victim chosen to reveal her identity by an ill-thought-out dramatic gesture?) The corpse's face was a battered, unrecognisable wreck. A poker lay discarded close by, seemingly tossed aside in the midst of the act of destruction (sudden fear of discovery, probably someone at the door of the library.)

He lifted a lock of hair (fine, flyaway, natural blonde); traced the curve of an ear (no feature on the human body more individual); sniffed unfamiliar soap and perfume. He'd known from the moment he'd seen the dress, but to settle John's mind not a scintilla of doubt must be permitted.

He spoke crisply, giving each word its due weight. "Rest easy. Whoever she is, she's not Charis."

"Sherlock, don't –" The pain of dawning hope on John's face was almost unbearable to witness.

"How often have you known me be wrong?"

"Look, I saw Charis at dinner, before the ball. She was wearing this dress."

"And I danced with her much later than that. When she was wearing something completely different. She'd swapped clothes with – " Habitual caution intervened. "With another girl."

"Oh, God." John looked down at the body. "Poor girl. The assassin must have mistaken her –" He came to an awkward stop, honesty warring with shame in his expression.

 _There is no-one in the three kingdoms he would not sacrifice if it would protect Charis. Why scruple to admit it?_

"But if that isn't Charis, where the hell is she? And is she safe?'

"I've not seen her for some time –" Sherlock strode to the door of the library. Jonathan stood at attention just outside, looking – fairly convincingly – as if he had not been listening to everything which had transpired within.

"Jonathan, about this dead woman. Not the Crown Princess, but there's a sporting chance the murderer thought it was."

The armsman nodded. "You'll be wanting me and the lads to find her grace and make sure she's safe, sir?"

"Yes. Once you've found her, bring the word to me. If you haven't found her inside a quarter of a turn, bring _that_ news to me, but keep looking. And don't let that idiot Holderness try to grab command. Give him my compliments and tell him I'm relying on him to stop the diplomats from taking anything personally until I've found out what's going on."

"On the case, sir."

That done, Sherlock returned to where John remained sunk in thought beside the corpse.

"Observe, John. You're a physician. What do you see?"

Focussing was clearly an effort. Still, after a moment John said, "There should be more blood."

"On the poker and the face, both," he agreed. "She'd been dead some time when this was done."

Not much past one in the morning now. The signal to unmask had been given at midnight. Had the dead girl still been alive to hear it? He cursed, not for the first time, the lack of a truly reliable way of determining the time of death. He felt at the corpse's jaw, trying to determine if there was even the hint of the onset of rigor. Nothing yet, nothing that might not be imagination.

The mask – had the girl been murdered while wearing it, or not? Why would she go to the library in the midst of a ball? For an assignation? To avoid an importunate suitor? The body might have been tampered with after death, but something in the free sprawl of the limbs suggested that it had not been moved bodily from the place where the murder had occurred.

Leave questions for now. Start with the facts.

Hardly any blood on poker or face. A body disfigured some time after death – possibly, on the evidence of the discarded poker, moments before the crime was discovered. Two actors working independently – or in concert – or conceivably, even if idiotically, the murderer returning to the scene to deface the body.

Start with facts. There was a small stain on the floorboards of the library, besides the corpse's head. He licked a forefinger, ran it over the stain and raised it to his nostrils. Lamp oil.

"John, put one of those lamps down here, down on the floor, just by the head. Then douse the rest. There's too much light. I want to see what whoever did this must have seen."

Paradoxically, the room proved very illuminating indeed once most of the lights were out.

"Oh. Oh, _yes._ "

He scrambled to his feet. The spiral iron staircase leading to the library's upper gallery was barely ten feet away. In the glare of the lamps it had looked an utterly obvious escape route. In the dimness, though, the little door which led from the gallery to the upper landing was hard to spot. To someone who didn't know the door was there, the staircase led into a dead end. Interesting, if anyone could have been shown to have left that way.

He picked up the lamp from the floor and moved towards the staircase. There was a large blue-and-white Chinese porcelain vase on a stand near the stair foot. As he passed it he groped down inside; a faint hope which crystallised into a blazing triumph as his hand closed over a crumpled ball of fabric.

He heard the double doors to the library open, and thrust the evidence out of sight before he turned to face the new arrival. The acting head of Palace security was white to the lips, but stood commendably straight.

"Your grace," Gregson said, "I hear bad news."

"Not as bad as rumour no doubt reports. If an assassin struck at the Crown Princess, then by good fortune the blow went awry." Sherlock moved aside to let Gregson see the body. "Whoever this is – and our next task is to discover that – it is not my wife."

"Thank the Blessed Virgin," Gregson muttered fervently. "Sir – I have been seeking the King."

"Despite appearances, my instincts tell me it's likely to prove a domestic, rather than a political killing. Accordingly the King's rest need not be troubled. I assume full responsibility for that decision. Can two of your men remove the body to one of the sitting rooms downstairs?"

"Indeed, sir. And lock the library?"

He fingered the ball of fabric he had retrieved from the vase. "Oh, no. I'm distinctly hopeful we may have visitors to the library later tonight. I'd hate to put any barrier in their way."

………

"Charis, don't come in here!"

Sherlock raised his head at John's shout, saw his wife white-faced in the doorway, grasping at the edge of the door, her eyes like those of a terrified animal. She'd changed her dress again since last he'd seen her – why? She now wore another of her elegant mourning affairs, cut on more demure lines than the one in which she'd started the evening.

"So it is true what they said she was wearing – oh, Holy Mother!" She swayed on the spot. John was instantly beside her, his arm around her shoulders, holding her upright by main force.

"I can't think what you were thinking of to come in here at all," he scolded.

"But you don't understand," she wailed. "She's wearing my dress! I got Frances killed."

Unfeigned horror and contrition in her voice. Expected, but interesting, nonetheless. An intelligent assumption about the corpse's identity (wrong) and, hence, the murderer's motive (very possibly correct).

First things first.

"Frances? The English girl I danced with, the one with sensible views on henbane? Preposterous on the face of it. Her chest is even flatter than yours. Unlike the corpse's."

"Sherlock!" John's voice sounded resigned rather than outraged.

"What? It's a simple observation of fact. The corpse does have significantly larger breasts than either Charis or Frances."

"It's probably just corsetry," Charis said sulkily. "There's supposed to be a new style of Italian lacing, that –"

"Charis, whatever whichever dressmaker it is is trying to talk you into, don't. It's a basic rule. Dress for the body you've got rather than the one you think you ought to have, or you'll end up looking like a duck. And stop interrupting my train of thought. Come in and sit against the wall, over there, where you aren't as likely to interfere with anything important."

"Sherlock, this is no place for - "

"Do give Charis credit for being quicker on the uptake than you are, John. It's a masked ball. The dead girl's roughly her height, colouring and wearing one of her dresses. Even you were fooled for a minute or so. If the murderer made a mistake, he may be still around. And thinking of rectifying it."

She shuddered. "Everyone wearing masks, all evening. He could be anyone. They tried to get me off to my chambers but I knew I'd only be safe if I stayed with you."

"That's a definition of 'safe' I haven't quite tumbled to, yet," John said.

That stung, probably more than John had meant. But then, John hadn't had Genia's white, set face haunting his sleep for the last weeks.

"It's a perfectly valid application of logic," Sherlock snapped. "If the intended victim was Charis, then I'm almost the only person who _isn't_ a suspect. First because I know perfectly well what Charis looks like, whether she's wearing a carnival mask or not, and secondly because princes of the blood traditionally don't murder their wives by strangling them and then – after an unexplained delay of half a turn of the glass or so – beating their faces to a pulp with a poker. Framing them for an adulterous liaison with a treasonous edge to it is much more the preferred royal style."

"Over my dead body," John growled.

"Well, obviously. You hardly think I'd try arranging Charis' judicial murder without eliminating the biggest single impediment to it first?"

"Do you mind if I lie down flat on the floor for a few minutes?" Charis enquired faintly.

A sensible suggestion from more than one perspective. "Go ahead. In fact, it could be quite helpful. Let me know if you spot anything that strikes you from that angle. Anything at all; don’t worry if it doesn't seem important."

Charis' voice was muffled by her awkward position on the floor. "Well, if she was still alive, whoever she is, I'd tell her to dismiss her tiring-woman."

" _What?_ "

She raised her head a few inches and flapped her left hand feebly in the direction of the corpse. "Just look at that lacing. Tension all over the place. Whoever did it must have been drunk. Or working in the dark."

Different possibilities exploded in multiple chains of thought, almost too quickly to keep track of them all. "Or dressing a body that was already dead?"

"Ugh! That's –" Charis' hand went to her mouth, as if to stifle an impulse to vomit.

"Not all that likely," John interrupted, glaring at him.

In point of fact, it would explain a number of points rather better than some of the alternatives. Perhaps when Charis had calmed down a little, he could ask her to play dead while he experimented with the ease of dressing and undressing her, to explore the feasibility of the murderer's having done so. Better not to broach the topic at the moment.

Sherlock selected a less fraught line of enquiry. "Laced by someone without much experience? A friend, maybe, rather than a maid. Though when you and Frances exchanged clothes, your lacing didn't look any different from when your own maid does it."

"She did do it. I signalled her when I got the idea of us swapping –"

"No-one told me you'd changed clothes. What was the idea?" John asked.

Charis didn't respond; something wrong, there. Sherlock cocked his head on one side.  
"Charis? You were all cock-a-whoop about it when we were dancing the Volta. What happened afterwards? Why did you change clothes again?"

She ducked her chin and didn't answer. She held her upper body tense, almost as if prepared to ward off a blow.

 _She's afraid. And not of a killer in the dark. Of me. Which makes no sense at all, except –_

"What happened after I saw you last?" Damn, that sounded much more threatening than he'd intended. He moved over to kneel beside her, extending a hand to take hers in his. It was cold and clammy. She almost whimpered at his touch. His eyes met John's over her head.

"I'll go and get you a glass of brandy, Charis. You need it." Blessed John; if he couldn't read a man's profession in the calluses of his hand, he could at least read an unspoken plea to make himself plausibly scarce for a time.

As soon as John had shut the door behind him, leaving them alone (save for the corpse, who wasn't in a position to comment), he slid his arm under Charis' shoulders and pulled her into a sitting position. She flopped like a rag doll.

"What happened to Frances' dress?"

"It got torn." Her voice was breathy, barely more than a whisper. The tears were flowing, now.

"By the Viscount?" The sudden tension in her body gave him the answer.

"It wasn't my fault."

"Who said it was?"

"The nuns." She paused, clearly sensing that this was not having the enlightening effect she might have hoped. "They said that – that we should wear our chastity like invisible armour."

"Lacking combat experience, your nuns, evidently. Half the point of good armour is to persuade whoever's thinking of attacking you to try someone less well-defended, instead." Intuition dawned just a second too late. "He _attacked_ you?"

She nodded; a tight, tense movement of her head, her eyes averted from him. Rage rose up, corrosive and overwhelming. Keeping his fury from spilling out before Charis took every iota of his self-control (all this time being wasted while a murderer walked the Palace, unhindered.)

"Tell me what happened. All of it."

She stumbled out the story; it did not take long. The news of John's intervention filled him with deep, desperate relief. It was if a good fairy had offered John one talent at which he would surpass all other men on the earth, and instead of opting – as most men would – for success in battle or the bedroom he had, with typical, unassuming _John_ -ness ,simply asked for the ability to always be in the right place at the right time.

"I'm sorry," Charis said, sniffling to a halt.

" _You're_ sorry? What on earth for?"

"I let it happen. The nuns said the way a girl walked, the way she carried her head – if she kept her thoughts fixed on the Virgin –"

"Charis, don't take advice from a blind man on archery and don't take advice from a nun on how to fend off sexual advances. The Viscount saw that blue dress, thought you were Frances and assumed he could therefore demand favours which you were in no position either to refuse or revenge. Not your fault. His."

Her eyes were dark with shock. He leant forward so their faces were bare inches apart.

"Listen. As soon as the current crisis passes, it will be my very great pleasure to demonstrate to that presumptuous imbecile that _cucullus non facit monachum_. Not a maxim he'll have heard. No abbeys in his country." Realisation hit with a sudden blinding flash; he cursed his stupidity. He scrambled to his feet. As he pushed open the door John – his sense of timing impeccable as ever – appeared on the threshold, carrying a bottle and glasses.

"Where are you going?"

"To find Frances Pickering."

"You think she's in danger?"

"Oh, she's certainly in danger. The interesting question is whether she's also a murderer."

He swept through the door, letting it fall shut behind him, before a second thought struck him. He opened the door just a crack and craned his head back round. " _Cucullus non facit monachum_. But if it walks like a duck and looks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."

He ignored the goose-walking-over-grave feeling Charis' and John's eerily similar looks of bafflement gave him, and clicked his tongue against his teeth.

"You really should learn English. Both of you. Not being gifted linguists themselves, the English are all too prone to assume that no-one within earshot understands their barbaric tongue except when they choose to issue orders in it. Earlier this evening, I heard Lady Wardale boasting to her husband that the Duke of Collompton's daughter had dismissed Mrs Pickering as her chaperone and chosen to put herself under her care. "

"So what?" John enquired.

"Have you seen either Frances or Elizabeth Pickering since the body was discovered? I haven't. Frances can't have fled the Palace in her underclothes – not without occasioning some comment, certainly. And yet the dress she was last seen wearing is now on the corpse – showing every sign of having been laced up in haste, by someone not trained as a tiring woman."

"And the body –"

"I suspect is that of Lady Diana Scoton. I shall ask her brother to identify it. John, will you stay here while he does so? Charis, you may prefer to be elsewhere. Feel free to explain why to John; I can assure you he will feel exactly as I do."

Her eyes were very resolute, though her face was pale and there was a suspicious wobble about her lower lip. "No. The Viscount may be a loathsome individual, but his father – and Lady Diana's – is a power in a Government whose friendship we need. The formalities must be observed. If the King remains absent and you are elsewhere engaged, I have to meet him. Though – " Her tone faltered for the first time. "I would be obliged if you could ask Lady Wardale to accompany the Viscount."

He nodded – it was almost a salute – and let the door fall shut behind him.

……….

"Oh, dear," Lady Wardale said. Beside her, the Viscount swayed on his feet in a way which to John's experienced eye meant he was a hair's-breadth from passing out. Gondal's had been a harder-drinking Court than Gaaldine's, always (and would be worse now under the Pretender; abstemious himself, he'd always found it both amusing and profitable to encourage the vices of other men). John's skills had been required by dozens of similar half-baked young aristocrats after Gondal's Court festivities; inhaled vomit, wounds from drunken brawls, men half-drowned from falling in the Palace ponds, the incident with the hedgehog he preferred not to recall too closely –

If only the demands of state and his own physician's oath had not prevented him, the treatment John really wanted to apply to the Viscount at this moment was to sober him up using the roughest techniques he'd learnt in the field and then geld him with a rusty pair of boar shears.

Charis stood ramrod-straight and set-faced, like a young officer in the honour guard at a state funeral. His heart swelled with pride.

"Sir," John said, his face wooden, "I regret to inform you that the body of a young woman has been discovered in the Palace. We have reason to believe it may be your sister, Lady Diana Scoton. Might I ask you to undertake the painful duty of identification?"

The Viscount blinked, glassily, at him. John sighed. "Allow me, sir." He indicated the stretcher on the floor of the room, covered by a white linen sheet.

"Oh, this is so horrible," Lady Wardale moaned. "I can't bear to look."

"Please, if you would prefer to sit down, I should advise it." Charis indicated a sofa. Lady Wardale sank down and then gave an alarmed squeak as she realised Charis had remained standing.

"No, please," Charis said, repressing Lady Wardale's attempt to rise again with a decisive gesture. "I insist."

"But I don't understand, ma'am," Lady Wardale said, averting her gaze resolutely from the corner with the stretcher. "Why do we not know if that poor, unfortunate girl is Lady Diana or not? You met her myself, ma'am, at my little tea-party at the Legation. Such a beautiful girl, her features would be immediately remembered by anyone who had seen her for a moment –"

John coughed. "Before proceeding with the identification, sir, I should warn you that the face has been much disfigured by violence."

"Oh, dear God!" Lady Wardale gulped. "There must be a monster abroad!" Then, with an intelligence John had not expected, she added, "But if not her face, then her dress. Such a distinctive colour, and she wore it with such –"

She came to an awkward stop.

"Indeed she did," Charis said. "However, it was a masked ball. It is far from uncommon at such affairs for women to arrange to exchange dresses, so that even their own party may not recognise them until the signal to unmask is given." She stood, if anything, a little straighter, looking the Viscount full in the face. "I myself did so, with Frances Pickering."

The Viscount started opening and shutting his mouth like a carp. With regret, John thought it was probably the prelude to vomiting rather than the realisation that he had committed an offence punishable by being torn apart between four horses. Technically, at least. The King would, probably, veto any attempt to put it into practice. First, because the political consequences of an English Duke losing both his legitimate children by violence in Gaaldine's Palace would be insupportable. Secondly, because it was undoubtedly the sort of thing the King would consider made Gaaldine look uncivilised in the eyes of the major European powers.

"Could you say, sir, if your sister possessed some identifying mark you could recognise?"

The Viscount still seemed unable to say anything. John moved forwards.

"Well, sir, you will just have to see what you can. Prepare yourself."

He moved back the sheet. That was the moment when the Viscount did vomit. John grabbed his shoulders and jerked him backwards to prevent the corpse being contaminated, something which would undoubtedly have had Sherlock throwing all his support behind the torn-apart-by-horses party. Fortunately, the front of the Viscount's doublet caught the worst of the problem.

"My condolences," Charis said, with a lack of sincerity so transparent that Lady Wardale jerked her head up with shock. "The sight is an appalling one, is it not? I almost swooned myself when I witnessed it."

With a little whimper, the Viscount subsided onto the floor. He was, John noted with regret, breathing, although he displayed no sign of consciousness.

"Oh, dear," Lady Wardale said again.

One of the attendant guards went to the door and spoke low words to someone outside. Within seconds servitors arrived to mop the marble floor.

"We shall have to send for Lady Diana's tiring woman," Charis said. "She will be with the other personal attendants. She will be the most likely person to know what her distinguishing characteristics are."

"My dear!" Lady Wardale said, and then gulped. "I mean, ma'am. A tiring woman? Is that a proper suggestion?"

"It is the Crown Princess's suggestion," John said repressively. "See to it, one of you. Also, find someone who can assist the Viscount to his lodgings. His personal secretary was with him in the card-room earlier; he's probably the best person."

Much to everyone's relief, Grace Vinson turned out to be a phlegmatic, competent person; the type, John diagnosed, who got on with the job at hand in a crisis and saved tears and collapse until later, when they would do no harm.

Through the medium of Lady Wardale, she explained that Lady Diana had had a ragged half-healed cut on the sole of her left foot, caused by treading on a shard of pottery in her room three weeks earlier, and a mole on the nape of her neck. Both blemishes were present. The tiring woman added that she would, in any event, have recognised the lace on the corpse's shift anywhere, having been required to unpick it and reapply it three separate times until it met with Lady Diana's approval. That settled the question of identity.

There remained the issue of the Viscount. John rolled him over onto his side, reflecting with savage satisfaction that in the absence of witchcraft that was the last time the Viscount would be able to wear _that_ doublet. He was just contemplating the merits of dousing the man's head in a bucket when the door was flung wide and Sherlock, trailed by one of Charis' maids, strode through.

He said something in English to Grace Vinson, who dropped him a slightly bemused curtsey and allowed herself to be led off somewhere by the maid. Then he turned to John and Charis.

"We've found Frances Pickering," he said, speaking a fast, idiomatic Gondalian which Lady Wardale, quite plainly, could make nothing of. "In one of the closets near the main ballroom."

Charis uttered a quick, sharp gasp of horror. He reached out and squeezed her hand.

"No; she's safe and well. Once I knew about the lacing on the corpse's dress, it wasn't difficult to guess where she must be. But I had to make sure I found her, before the murderer did." He looked at the battered thing on the stretcher. "That little brat talked her into swapping clothes and, once she was safely dressed, abandoned Frances in her stays and shift. No way of getting into that damned duck dress without help. I do love having a thoroughly unpleasant victim. It opens up so many more possibilities."

"I'm sure Lady Diana will be devastated to have been of service to you." John said. "So this formal identification charade was simply to keep us out of your way while you hunted for Frances Pickering?"

"Certainly not." Sherlock gestured at the recumbent Viscount. "It was to keep _him_ out of _my_ way. At least, until I've had a word with Mycroft about his anti-duelling laws. My brother, with his usual inconvenient timing, remains absent. He's always had a bad habit of holing up in some secret lair part-way through Palace functions, but you think he'd come out now there's something interesting happening."

"Perhaps he doesn't want to spoil your fun," John said acidly. "And in the King's continued absence you might, perhaps, offer the Family's formal condolences to Lady Wardale on the death of her charge. In a language she can understand."

"Of course." He turned, bowed, and, in Latin, said, "I very much regret that I must formally apprise you of the death of Lady Diana Scoton. We offer you Gaaldine's most profound sympathy in your loss.. Be assured, ma'am, that we shall track down the perpetrator and that the King's justice will be carried out to its fullest extent once we have done so. I apologise that we cannot at present release the body into your care for tending –"

Lady Wardale's face betrayed that she had not even considered the possibility of having to take the corpse home with her from the Palace. She recovered herself commendably.

"I understand perfectly, sir. In any event, I believe I should ascertain the wishes of Viscount Dalgleish as to how his sister's remains are to be disposed once you are in a position to release them." She looked down at the heap of misery on the floor and sounded resigned as she added, "When, that is, he is more himself."

"Never more himself than he is at the moment," Sherlock muttered. "Indeed, one might consider he is currently displaying his most pleasant aspect."

Rather fortunately, at this moment the door opened again to admit Hatherleigh, who looked worlds different from the dapper, fulsome young man who had received them at the English party's lodgings. His hair was dishevelled and he was panting, as though he had run all the way from wherever the message had reached him.

"May I beg to know what has happened, your grace?" he burst out, as soon as he entered the room. "There are such rumours flying around and – oh." He caught sight of the body on the stretcher and his face went an indescribable colour. "Good God, her face! Who can have done such a thing to her poor face?"

"We are engaged in trying to establish that very matter," Sherlock said smoothly. "Do you, incidentally, recognise whose body it is?"

Hatherleigh looked at him. "I – ah, the rumours suggested –"

"Lay rumour to one side for the moment. Court gossip is speedy but frequently very inaccurately directed. You should hear what the Palace rumour mills say about _me._ "

The secretary's glance flicked, uneasily, from Sherlock to Charis. Almost as if on cue, Charis rose, her arm linked in Lady Wardale's.

"I shall return Lady Wardale to her party and say farewell to them on our behalf, if that is in accordance with your wishes," she said, dropping a formal curtsey to Sherlock.

He bowed in response. "Admirably so. After which, I commend you to your chambers. The night has been long and arduous and you require your rest."

She curtseyed again. "A sound suggestion. Good night."

The door swished shut behind them. John had never been so glad of the control his years of card-playing had given to his features. There was a certain quirk at the corner of Sherlock's mouth which suggested he was more than aware of John's reaction.

Hatherleigh blinked, plainly flummoxed. Then he turned back to the business at hand.

"Might I, sir, take the liberty of checking a point?"

Sherlock made a "help yourself" gesture, and Hatherleigh dropped to his knees beside the body on the stretcher, moving aside the skirts just enough to reveal the feet. He scrutinised their soles for a second and then raised his head.

"My worst fears are confirmed, sir. I dread having to write to the Duke with the news."

"You will write the letter, undoubtedly, but surely her brother will sign it?"

An odd, calculating expression spread across Hatherleigh's face. "You may not be aware, sir, but the Duke has been my most kind patron for many years. My late father did him a signal service during the wars in our country."

"Oh, it was your _father_." Sherlock's pause was timed to a nicety. "To whom you owe the Duke's patronage, I mean. When we met the other day, I confess to wondering how a man having the obscure origins you claimed had obtained such an elevated position as Viscount Dalgliesh's private secretary. Notwithstanding your self-evident talents." He paused again. "Regrettable, how the world wags, isn't it? The slight accident of birth elevates one man above another, when the second would have done so much more with the worldly gifts the first man will simply squander."

He looked, pointedly, at the bundle of misery on the floor. "You must by now have developed a practised technique for returning the Viscount to his lodgings when he is – overcome with exhaustion. Might I ask you to make use of it now? Feel free to avail yourself of any assistance from the Palace servants as you may need. We'll speak further in the morning, but I have more pressing interviews to conduct. Farewell for the moment."

He whisked out of the room. John shrugged, helplessly, in the direction of Hatherleigh and followed in Sherlock's wake. He did not speak until they were alone in the small writing room adjacent to the library, which it seemed Sherlock had chosen as his base for operations.

"Could you please tell me what the Hell that was? And what was going on with Charis?"

"Hand signals," Sherlock said succinctly. "I needed to get rid of Lady Wardale."

"Hand signals," John echoed. "You have a code?"

"Of course we do. I realised shortly after the wedding that the possibilities marriage opened up were enormous."

"I do so wish I could stop myself adding, 'For deception and obfuscation' to that otherwise admirable-sounding husbandly sentiment."

"You know me too well, that's the problem." Sherlock's smile, especially in the soft candle-light of the writing room, as ever had the power to make his heart turn over. John gritted his teeth.

"No; the problem is the murky depths I'm discovering in Charis. What, if you care to tell me, was behind that sudden display of coolly correct wifely submissiveness?"

"As you know perfectly well, there's a strand in Court gossip, which holds that 'coolly correct' describes the precise state of our relations."

John fought his sudden urge to punch something. "Idiots. Empty-headed, prattling idiots."

"It's sometimes useful to give idiots something they can choose to think of as evidence. It flatters their vanity and distracts their attention. Hatherleigh isn't an idiot, John, but he has a blind spot."

"Lord Wardale's secretary?"

"Quite so. Philip Derwent. Who has no regard for anything except Philip Derwent's advancement, no matter what that takes. And whose own blind spot is his settled conviction that anyone to whom he chooses to make himself agreeable must find him irresistible. It's a dangerous combination, the two of them; each reinforces the other's faults."

He flopped carelessly down on one of the sofas, his hands steepled beneath his chin. "Time to start questioning the rest of the English party. If the attack on Lady Diana was not that of an incompetent assassin aiming for Charis –"

"You still think it could be?" John demanded, the fear that always rested barely sleeping beneath his ribs leaping up and threatening to take him by the throat. "And you let her go to her rooms?"

"At present, I think it a small but real possibility. And no, of course she hasn't gone to her rooms. Hand signals, John. She'll be in my suite by now, with half my guard watching the routes in and a honed poignard beneath the pillow. To say nothing of one or two other nasty surprises for anyone who tries to break in there. Among which, I might mention, will be Charis herself. I don't expect to see my own bed tonight, but that's no reason she shouldn't make use of it. Anyway, as I say, time to start questioning the rest of the English party. Sir Hector is a pompous individual, highly conscious of his own importance. He will therefore expect us to call him first."

"So who are we proposing to call?"

"Who but the party's courier? Who knows everywhere they have been and everything they have spent."

John snorted. "Better, if I know couriers."

"In this particular courier's case, most certainly. John; kindly pass the word for the Conte d'Imola."


	7. Seven Years of Gamesplay

The Conte d'Imola strode through the double doors into the writing room. Despite himself, John found his eye tracing the lines of the Conte's body, the curious balance between the almost feminine flare of his hips and the free athleticism of those long limbs. His lustrous dark eyes and glossy black hair would have been the envy of any woman at the ball tonight, as would the sculptured alabaster brow and those peach-smooth cheeks.

Of course, as a medical man practising so close to the territories of the Sultan, John had encountered eunuchs before and felt nothing but pity for them. He'd never before encountered one of the legendary _castrati_ of the Papal States, though. The Conte d'Imola had flitted through the capital over the last few days, a prurient buzz of commentary following him, but John had not previously been so close. Nor had he expected the Conte's ambiguous presence to reach so deep within him, to excite some hidden, shameful part of his being, to stop his breath and set his heart thumping erratically.

Sherlock rose as the Conte approached.

"So," he purred. "Not running away from my presence this time?"

"You summoned me to attend on you. How could I refuse a royal command?" The Conte's speaking voice was a vibrant contralto, deeper than John had, sub-consciously, been expecting and with the control which betrayed the trained singer.

"I understood you were famous for it."

"Perhaps it depends on the nature of the prince in question?"

"Not the nature of the command?"

"Yours – to command." The Conte swept the deepest and most courtly of bows and then, with scarcely a break, rose and kissed Sherlock on both cheeks.

Sherlock smiled, took the Conte in his arms, and kissed him back with equal fervour. John suppressed a gasp; his eye went to the door which, mercifully, remained tight shut.

"Sherlock, what the –?"

"Won't you introduce me to your friend, my sweet? Before an effluxion of blood into the brain snatches him from you in the prime of his – ah, his prime."

"Irene, kindly stop that. John, may I introduce Miss Irene Adler? As you may have gathered, John, we are old – adversaries. We first met seven years ago when I was on a delicate diplomatic mission to Bohemia and she was on a distinctly indelicate mission to the same court."

John gulped. "You – um – him – that is – her –"

"Yes; she's currently posing as an Italian castrato acting as courier to Dr Atherton's party. Irene, how did even you produce a story to explain the combination of your alleged condition and your title?"

"Long practice, sweetling. Besides, I have a large and varied acquaintance, and the man from whom I borrowed this particular life history had no further use for it."

Something about the glitter in her eyes warned John not to press the point. "So, Miss Adler, what brings you to Gaaldine?"

Sherlock yawned. "Or, more bluntly, have you succeeded in making Rome too hot to hold you? I warned you last time about teasing Cardinals."

"No. When I choose to retrace my steps, Rome will welcome me with open arms. Including those of at least one Cardinal. Since you ask, I'm here on a professional engagement."

"Your other profession, I take it. Mycroft and I have tried our best, but it's been an uphill struggle to bring the Terpsichorian arts to Gaaldine. The better class of theatrical managers are reluctant to risk their companies in the wilds. And our aristocrats would rather sport and gamble than encounter anything which requires them to use what passes for their brains. But my wife takes a keen interest in music. Charis may succeed in making opera fashionable with the Duchesses and Countesses where we have failed with the Dukes and Earls."

"Yes, I heard a rumour in Rome you'd married, Sherlock, but you know what far-fetched tales drift about. No-one could have been more surprised than I when I arrived in the three kingdoms to discover it was actually true."

"Thank you. Your congratulations mean a great deal to me. Do you wish to meet Charis? When we've got a little more leisure, I mean, not immediately. She's had rather an awful night. And there is a murderer still at large; I fear we are all in danger of forgetting that."

John's jaw dropped. "You're planning to introduce _Charis_ to – um – "

"Miss Adler, John. I detest repeating myself. Why not? It's not as if _I'm_ the King of Bohemia. She's not some embarrassing relic of my pre-marriage days. She hasn't even been my mistress."

"Even I doubted my ability to remain in character long enough to achieve that."

"Thank you, Irene. I can assure you the feeling was mutual. So, who are you working for this time? If it's the Pretender, I shall be forced to withdraw that invitation. Indeed, your continued liberty within this realm would become somewhat debateable."

"Me, act for the Pretender? Have you _met_ him?"

A sudden, unexpected silence. Then, in a flat, bereft voice which took John back twenty years, Sherlock said, "Briefly. Once."

Irene's head jerked up; she, too, had heard – whatever it was. "I'm not engaged with regard to your affairs. England's paying me."

"Good luck on collecting your fee. One obscure clerk in some deep-buried department of account and you'll be whistling for your money for the next ten years. It's happened before."

"So I gather. Which is why I'll take any lucrative sideline, provided it's not in conflict with my mission." She paused, and then added, very deliberately, "I was in Gondal less than a month ago and I am persuaded that you will find my observations of interest."

"For that, you would definitely need to meet Charis. Not least, because you happened to be present for King Ambrosine's funeral. It grieved her excessively that she could not attend. But I propose to offer you a rather more direct contract. I need to know everything about your party. And I will pay for that information."

"And if that conflicts with my mission?"

"Then I'll buy out your contract and James of England can get whatever's left over."

"No, Sherlock. I am not for sale."

He gave an exasperated sigh. "You've chosen the wrong side. Time will show you."

"It's my side. Make the best of it."

Sherlock paused, then nodded. "I suppose, I could expect no less of you, Irene. Tell me what you can."

John coughed. "Sherlock, could we have a word?"

Sherlock nodded. "Irene, give us a quarter turn of the glass. Wait outside. If you see any of your party, give the impression you're frightened to within an inch of your life."

Irene lifted her chin, looking him straight in the eye. "If I truly were the Conte d'Imola, I would be terrified. With good reason. With limited exceptions, those in my party are not willing to show kindness to those they deem outsiders. When trouble comes, the first thought which occurs to Sir Hector is on whom he should pin the blame. Nor is he the only member of his party driven by thoughts of escape, or with secrets they would kill to protect."

She turned to look at John. "I do not know who murdered Lady Diana Scoton, for your information. Though I certainly could have done so, twenty times over. She had a way of looking at people – I, of course, was a particular target of her contempt. But so was Grace, her tiring woman, whom she treated as a beast of burden, and Mrs Pickering, whom she was scheming to dismiss virtually from the moment she left Rome. But I wouldn't have been such a fool as to kill Lady Diana here, of all places. Not with Sherlock in the Palace."

There came a rapid patter of knocks on the door. Sherlock gestured to Irene and she became – John could not have said how - the Conte d'Imola again; a mixture of obsequiousness and defiance, putting on an unconvincing bold front to cover his terror.

"Come in," Sherlock commanded, and Jonathan entered the room.

"Sir," he began and then stopped, looking sidelong at the Conte d'Imola.

"Events have, it appears, moved on," Sherlock said. "I shall not need to question you further this evening. Hold yourself ready to be summoned again in the morning. Goodnight."

The Conte made a deeply theatrical bow and withdrew.

Having checked the door had closed properly, Jonathan said, "Sir, it's as you said. Looks like the party in question has remembered what he's forgotten. On his way there now, sir."

"No danger of the butterfly escaping the net before I get there?"

Jonathan shook his head. "The lads on the staircase have their orders, sir."

"Excellent. Then I'll be on my way. John, I'll leave you to deal with Sir Hector."

"Me? But he's expecting to see you."

"Quite so. He will be affronted beyond bearing by my absence. So he'll say a great deal more than he intends, and phrase it less carefully than he should. I'm relying on you, John. Note down everything of importance. And if you don't think it's important, note it down anyway.

"And you?"

"Me? I'll be in the library."

………

"This is intolerable," Sir Hector said, for what John calculated must be the eighth time.

"It has been an extremely trying evening for us all," John agreed. Sir Hector eyed him suspiciously.

"I demand to see the Crown Prince."

John allowed an edge of ice to enter his voice. "His grace the Crown Prince is not at liberty to receive you."

"But a madman has struck down Lady Diana Scoton in this very Palace. Questions will be asked at the very highest levels within the Government of my country."

"Eventually, once the news reaches them, yes. But I can assure you, questions are already being asked at the highest levels of Government in _this_ country. Principally by the Crown Prince. Hence his unavailability at present. He is investigating a promising line of enquiry. He has taken the burden of the investigation into his own hands."

Sir Hector – whom John suspected of being unable to take his own privates into his hands without a confirmatory memo in triplicate – gulped and took a pinch of snuff. "And what might his preliminary conclusions be?"

"I am not at liberty to divulge them." Which would have been equally true had John known anything, and so perfectly safe (as well as suitably pompous) by way of answer. "Have you any idea of anyone who might have had reason to bear a grudge against Lady Diana?"

A furtive, fugitive expression flitted across Sir Hector's face. His voice, too, might have been just a little too emphatic as he said, "Certainly not. She was a charming, beautiful, high-spirited girl with the world at her feet. Who could have dreamt of bearing her any malice?"

 _Every other girl in her vicinity, on that showing._ John could hear his sister Harriet's forthright voice as clearly as if she was in the room, not two hundred miles to the north. He made his voice stern.

"Sir Hector, this is not the time to be overly delicate. When someone dies by violence, the first thing which needs to be forgotten is any nonsense about 'not speaking ill of the dead'. Someone did indeed feel ill-will towards Lady Diana – sufficient to kill her. Therefore we need to know who that might have been. Try to think."

The Conte d'Imola's words swirled around John's head. _I, of course, was a particular target of her contempt. But so was Grace, her tiring woman, whom she treated as a beast of burden, and Mrs Pickering, whom she was scheming to dismiss virtually from the moment she left Rome._

Sir Hector, of course, was Mrs Pickering's brother. Could he, John, have mentioned Harriet's name, in parallel circumstances? Only, he thought, to Sherlock, who would undoubtedly have known already, and so didn't count.

After a moment Sir Hector said stiffly, "Lady Diana had from time to time expressed concern that the Conte d'Imola might be taking advantage of the party. She also believed that he – well, I suppose someone like that – it's to be expected he'd be somewhat strange –"

"Could you be a little more explicit?" John suggested, when Sir Hector had, apparently, managed to tie himself up in verbal knots so effectively as to preclude further speech.

Sir Hector's face was puce with embarrassment. "Lady Diana suspected that he'd been rummaging through the women of the party's baggage – to be precise their – ah – smallclothes."

Fighting the impulse to guffaw took a major effort on John's part. Even if he had not known the Conte d'Imola's true identity, the idea of him rummaging through an adolescent girl's underwear seemed somehow irresistibly funny.

"How very disturbing," he managed eventually. "And when did she raise this concern with you?"

Any lingering interest he might have had in the story dissipated abruptly at the news that the story had been put about by Lady Diana within the first two or three days after their leaving Rome, where the Conte had joined their party on letters of recommendation furnished by one of Dr Atherton's numerous correspondents. Elizabeth Pickering had, apparently, investigated the business and reached the conclusion that Lady Diana was probably making the whole story up either to make herself seem important or to contrive the Conte's dismissal.

Which, John reflected, was doubtless an accurate assessment but could hardly have contributed to good feeling between the two women. He wondered, yet again, where Mrs Pickering might have gone. She'd been ignominiously dismissed from her position as chaperone that very evening – would she have simply gone back to her lodgings? Or hung around the Palace, angry and confused, possibly contemplating a confrontation with the girl, an appeal to her better nature?

That might explain the girl's presence in the library. Lady Diana should, surely, have been too alert to the danger to her reputation to agree to an assignation with a man. A woman – her own former chaperone – posed no such danger.

He allowed the discussion with Sir Hector to wrap up in woolly pleasantries. The English knight was palpably of no interest in this regard. His sister, on the other hand – as soon as Sherlock returned John would impress upon him the importance of finding Elizabeth Pickering without delay.

……….

For a man who had been marched into the writing room between two of Sherlock's armsmen, Dr Atherton seemed remarkably unperturbed. Perhaps he could not believe a man with whom he had corresponded so long and so amiably could truly prove a threat to him. Unlike John, he seemed oblivious to Sherlock's knife-edge tension; the sense of controlled fury boiling beneath his composed exterior, a tension that must only be increased by Dr Atherton's startling likeness to the King. Instead he seemed to be merely curious as to the process of logic which had led to this outcome.

"But what, sir, caused you to look for my handkerchief in the library in the first place?"

"From the angle of the blows to Lady Diana's face, I calculated that the person wielding the poker must have been kneeling or crouching beside her body. Also, there was a small stain of lamp-oil on the floor by the body's head. When I tried to recreate the scene, the lamp I placed in that position illuminated the gold lettering of a book on the shelf which was exactly on my eye-line. Earl Rivers' _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_. That book bore every sign of having been pulled from the shelf and replaced in haste."

John coughed. "Couldn't the librarian or his assistants have disturbed the book? Or simply not straightened the shelf since the last reader?"

Sherlock grinned; a feral, menacing expression. "You have met the Court librarian? If his assistants regularly left the shelves in that state – especially before a function – then the city hangman's appropriations for rope would need to be trebled. No, that book had been recently perused. And, since it's in English –"

"Ah. I was wondering."

"The books on that shelf are all rare incunabula in English. That's why we put them low down and out of sight. Only a handful of people who have access to them can read them, and even fewer want to. That immediately narrowed my field of suspects, especially since, from the angle, the book would only have been likely to catch the eye of a man of my height."

In John's opinion, Dr Atherton was an inch or two taller than Sherlock (another point in which he resembled the King) but he felt this might not, perhaps, be the moment to insist on strict accuracy.

"You believed someone decided to take a quick look at a book which had piqued his interest _while he was disfiguring a dead body?_ "

"There's little I'd put past a true bibliophile."

Dr Atherton, almost unbelievably, looked flattered.

"However, the one thing I would not believe is that the man who might be distracted by a tempting book in such circumstances would dream of contaminating it even by the hand's ordinary grease and dirt."

"Certainly not," Dr Atherton said. "It was printed in 1477! I would, even in ordinary circumstances, have changed my gloves, and in this case, the state of my hands –" He looked down at them and, for the first time, his genial expression wavered.

"Quite so," Sherlock said, and there was something in his tone which chilled John's blood. "Allow me to reconstruct your actions, Dr Atherton. You entered the library shortly before midnight. For obvious reasons, you wished to avoid being present in the ballroom when the signal was given to unmask."

"Obvious reasons, indeed." He assumed an expression of somewhat precarious dignity. "I should have avoided Gaaldine altogether. And, certainly, once in Gaaldine, avoided mingling in Court circles. But curiosity, I'm afraid, got the better of me. But – for the credit of my family – this was not a face I should have shown in these parts."

"And, also out of curiosity, Dr Atherton, is your mother still alive?"

"She is indeed. A pillar of our small Oxford society. Anyone acquainted with us will attest she has devoted the autumn of her years to acts of charity."

"Anyone acquainted with my late uncle might suggest similar impulses must have governed the springtime of her days, also."

"Perhaps, if we could return to the main issue?" John said.

"Yes, indeed," Sherlock said. "So, Dr Atherton, once in the library you stumbled across Lady Diana's corpse. What did you observe? Evidence only, not surmises."

The appeal to the detached observer in him seemed to work. He started to tick off points on his fingers. "Cyanosed face, bulging eyes. Marks on the neck. Manual strangulation as the cause of death, without a doubt. No – ah – disturbance of the garments. Very little sign of any resistance."

"Could Lady Diana have mustered much?"

Dr Atherton shook his head. "Not if taken by surprise – for example, by someone in her party, whom she knew well. She was of a sanguine not an energetic type and by that stage in the evening would have consumed a considerable amount of wine."

"Had. Nothing conditional about it. So, what then? For reasons best known to yourself – we'll come on to those in a moment – you decided against raising the alarm. Instead, you took the poker and set about rendering the corpse unrecognisable."

The memory of the sick horror which had assailed him in the library forced John to speak. "Lady Diana's face was almost destroyed. What kind of _philosopher_ does a thing like that?"

Sherlock stretched out a calming hand; its warm weight rested on John's arm. His voice dripped vitriol. "You must forgive my friend. As court physician, he was one of the earliest witnesses of your handiwork. He assumed – as you intended anyone stumbling on the scene to assume – that the body was that of my wife Charis. A woman John has known since she was born."

"What else could I do? I hoped to deflect suspicion away from our party, by suggesting that Lady Diana had been killed by mistake, and the assassin disfigured the body to conceal his blunder. I knew the deception could not last long, but I had to buy time. It's not something I'm proud of, you know."

Sherlock's eyes were chips of ice. "You shouldn't be. Anyway, you knelt by the corpse to carry out your task and, just as your task was almost finished, caught sight of a rare volume which you had long hoped to read."

"Earl Rivers was the most fascinating thinker," Dr Atherton said, his voice wistful.

"Who ended his days beneath the headsman's axe, as a result of an ill-thought-out excursion into politics."

"Sherlock, time's getting on. What then?"

Sherlock looked at Dr Atherton. "You covered your hand with your handkerchief to protect the book. You took the book off the shelf meaning only to steal a quick glance but quickly became engrossed, and were only recalled to yourself by a sound outside the door which made you fear someone was about to enter. You thrust the book back onto the shelf, discarded the poker by the body and made for the staircase to the upper gallery. On the way, you realised your handkerchief bore highly incriminating stains. There being no fire in the room, and apprehensive that you might be subjected to a search, you dropped it into the vase by the staircase foot, only realising subsequently that the handkerchief bore your monogram."

"As accurate as if you had been there. That really is quite remarkable," Dr Atherton said, shaking his head in wonder.

John thought so too, though in his case it was the sheer idiocy of which the highly intelligent were capable on which he remarked. Not, as it happened, for the first time.

"One question, only, Dr Atherton," Sherlock said.

The scholar inclined his head in acquiescence. "Yes, sir?"

"What was your object in disfiguring Lady Diana's face? Especially since it must have occurred to you that any serious student of the human body would be able to tell that it had occurred some time after her death."

He smiled; an odd, sad little smile. "While I knew one such student was in the city – indeed, in the Palace itself – I made a blunder unworthy of a man of science. I assumed that you would not choose to get your own hands dirty. Palace guards are not, in my experience, a class of men overly aware of the niceties of post-death changes in the body, or intimately familiar with the _De Motu Cordis_."

"You really weren't thinking clearly, were you, Dr Atherton? Given how long we have corresponded. But again, what motivated you?"

The scholar sighed. "An impulse to protect that unhappy woman. And to shield her daughter from the shame and disgrace of her mother's crime."

Sherlock leaned forward, steepling his hands beneath his chin. "You believe Elizabeth Pickering to be Lady Diana's killer?"

"Who else?" Dr Atherton waved a hand in an explanatory gesture. "Motive – means – the inherent instability of the female sex, exacerbated no doubt in Mrs Pickering's case by the approach of the climacteric – they warned me before I left England that it would be the women of the party who would be the trouble. I was foolish enough to believe that whatever trouble they might stir up, I could remain unaffected by it. Philosophy would be my armour."

John cleared his throat. "Were you aware of the bad blood between Lady Diana and Mrs Pickering?"

The scholar pursed his lips. "Philosophy can only take a man so far. I have full command of my ears, and the row about Lady Diana's choice of dress for this evening could have been heard in Glasstown."

"I rather think you knew more than that," Sherlock said. "At the time when you stumbled across Lady Diana's dead body in the library you were aware she had earlier placed herself under the chaperonage of Lady Wardale. I think, too, you were also aware of Sir Hector's decision to dismiss Mrs Pickering and her daughter from his party, in an effort to heal the breach with Lady Diana and protect his own position with the Duke."

Dr Atherton nodded. "I had hoped we – Sir Hector and I – could have dealt with this quietly. I do not believe Mrs Pickering could have been in sound mind at the time. That was what motivated my obfuscation. I am sorry."

"That you did it, or that it failed to answer?" Sherlock did not allow him a chance to respond. "I think, Dr Atherton, I shall be corresponding with the Royal Society. I have admired the papers you presented there, in particular the meticulous beauty of your experimental method, and wished affairs of state had permitted me to be present to hear you deliver them."

"You flatter me, sir."

"Apparently. The man sitting in this room before me, the man who mutilated a dead girl's face in a settled belief – based on very little empirical data – that he knew who had killed her – I cannot reconcile that man with the author of those papers. Not, at least, without assuming he had a more than commonly able assistant. Tell me, how long have you been using Frances Pickering as your devil?"

"Amanuensis, sir. That I'll concede. She writes an admirably clear hand and my close sight is not what it was. Maybe, too, some assistance on mechanical calculations and on the routine taking and noting of observations. But only under my closest supervision."

John expected Sherlock to challenge this; the curl of his lip suggested disbelief. Instead, he merely said, "Well, Dr Atherton, that would seem to be all we can take forward now. Don't leave the capital, will you? I like my guard to keep in training, but I disapprove of having to send them haring around the country unnecessarily."

After the door had closed behind him, Sherlock let out a long sigh. "God save me from imbeciles and time-wasters. All I could have read from the corpse irrevocably erased, and for what? Because Dr Atherton chose to leap to conclusions."

"Just because he leapt to them, doesn't make them necessarily wrong," John said, hitching himself comfortably on the arm of the settle. "After all, Elizabeth Pickering did have good grounds for hating Lady Diana, she could have had time to kill her – "

"Lady Diana didn't die earlier than Anthea's arrival at the party, if we believe Frances Pickering's story."

"And do we?"

"Well, there are plenty of reasons a girl might end up stripped to her underclothes in a closet at a Palace ball –"

"'Plenty' strikes me as pushing it. 'One or two outstandingly obvious' would be nearer the mark."

"John, you'd be surprised. But, anyway, while I take nothing on trust, the circumstantial evidence is reasonably strong. Anthea – according to both Anthea and the person with whom she was having her intimate pre-ball supper – could hardly have entered the ballroom much before eleven. But Lady Diana's blood had ceased to flow some time before Dr Atherton bashed her face to bits with the poker, which on his account – again, supported by circumstantial evidence – happened just before the signal to unmask was given at midnight. And if anyone in the Palace saw Elizabeth Pickering after eleven, they're not saying. Which is, of course, the most interesting thing about the whole business."

"Why? Strangulation of that type would only take a moment or two, so a tight timetable is a very different thing from an impossible one. If Mrs Pickering had killed the girl, trying to make herself scarce would be the obvious reaction."

"Trying? That, yes. But succeeding, in becoming invisible, in the Palace? When it's _me_ asking? I can think of only one explanation which adequately accounts for that. And if I'm right – well, then this game has taken a truly unexpected turn. "

His eyes danced with mischief, but John knew from bitter experience that enquiring further would be futile. If they were all spared, he would no doubt find out in due course. Until then, he would have to contain his soul in patience.


	8. Eight Hours Later

Elizabeth looked at the beautifully arranged flowers the manservant had brought and turned the note which had come with them over and over in her fingers.

 _It grieves me more than I can express to learn that an evening which brought me such exquisite delight should, unbeknownst to us both, also have contained such horror. Be assured, my lady, that you are always in my thoughts. Whatever means I possess to lighten your burdens in these troubled times I put, unequivocally, at your disposal. If you need to reach me urgently, a note left at the Marsh Isles Inn, by St Oneysimos's shrine, under cover to the landlord but sealed with the enclosed will bring help as speedily as thought may contrive._

The seal enclosed was a cylinder of onyx, carved intaglio with a device which after a little scrutiny Elizabeth identified as a badger carrying an outsized holly-leaf in its mouth. She allowed her fingers to caress it before she dropped it into her pocket, together with the note.

In all that long, drear morning, the only ray of brightness had been a few scribbled words penned by a man she had met only yesterday and in whose arms she had wantonly lain for the best part of the night.

Lain and laughed while a murderer – his villainy concealed behind a carnival mask - stole through the brilliantly lit ballrooms of the Palace to strangle a young girl and batter her face to a bloody wreck.

So far Frances and Grace had sobbed continuously on each other's shoulders, exchanging wild tales from the winter fireside about rapes and disembowelments, until Elizabeth had been hard put not to box both their ears. They feared a masked stranger, a faceless monster, a foreign ogre. Lurking at the back of Elizabeth's mind, though, was a deeper and more pungent fear.

 _What if the murderer lurks among those with whom we have broken bread over so many weeks and months?_

The door opened and she looked up. Hector, his face not just the sour-milk colour of yesterday but covered in a cold sheen of sweat, stood framed in the arch, not meeting her eyes. A sound like a throat being cleared came from behind him. He started, and then withdrew onto the landing, no more than a couple of paces from the door but as seemingly as far as if he were still in England.

Two guards, dressed in the Palace livery, strode past him and took up stance either side of the doorway. Past them strode a third man. He was not someone who would stand out in a crowd, being of average height with a bland, doughy face and greasy black hair, cut in an unflattering style. Despite his appearance, he carried a cold chill into the room. Elizabeth did not mistake him for anyone other than an man of power.

"You are, I believe, Mrs Pickering?" he enquired, in a precise, clipped Latin.

"And you, sir?" she enquired. "You would appear to have the advantage of me?"

He gathered in both the guards by eye, as if sharing a private joke. The expressions on all three of them made her stomach turn. Nevertheless, she was a lady – the events of last night notwithstanding – and was owed the courtesy of that status.

"I requested your name, sir. And, if you would be so good, an explanation of your business. This is, as you will be aware, a house of mourning. We suffered an inconceivable tragedy last night and there are many claims on my time as a result."

"None so pressing as mine, ma'am." There was a slight emphasis on the word "pressing" and one of the guards – improbable as it was that he understood the language – half-choked back a laugh. "Andrew Dimmock, head of Palace Security. I and my – colleagues – have business with you this morning. You must come with us."

"Palace security? But I had understood his grace the Crown Prince to have conduct of the investigation –"

Dimmock's face looked, abruptly, as if someone had caught him by the throat. Elizabeth had not presided over so many Oxford dinners hosted by her brother for the Fellows of St Jerome's to be unable to spot professional jealousy when she saw it. It gave her the smallest possible flicker of hope.

"The Crown Prince," Dimmock choked out, "was gracious enough to interest himself last night, when I was unfortunately indisposed. However, murder is not a matter for gentlemen of the court to treat as a diversion to pick up and put down as it suits them. And, Mrs Pickering, in any event I understand the Crown Prince has not attempted to question you?"

A betraying red flush spread across her face. "Why should he? I left the ball early and returned to these lodgings. I was not aware that Lady Diana had been murdered until the rest of the party arrived home, some considerable time later."

"Tell me, have you any witness to your movements last night?"

"A palace servant escorted me home." That, at least, was true, if incomplete.

"A servant as to whose name you did not enquire and whose features you did not remark, no doubt." Dimmock's cold smile broadened. "I must invite you to accompany me elsewhere for questioning."

She caught the sound of an indrawn breath from the landing and, despite the cold dread which threatened to render her limbs incapable of movement, she found a warm spark of anger. What had Hector _thought_ these men were here for? A Duke's daughter lay dead; the English Envoy's wife had failed in her chaperonage of the girl; a royal Palace had been stained with blood. Obviously all anyone wanted was a quick, clean solution and what better than an extorted confession from someone who had quarrelled with the girl in front of umpteen witnesses yesterday?

Elizabeth rose to her feet. The slight weight of her pocket bumping against her hip reminded her that she was not, after all, wholly friendless here.

"I need to write a note before I leave. As I said, my duties are many and I, too, may not pick them up and drop them at convenience. "

Dimmock walked across the room and gripped her wrist; not painfully, but with promise of pain if she struggled. "No notes. Anything you need to convey, you may tell Sir Hector, in the hearing of us all."

Her last frail hope dashed, then. She nodded, as if the prohibition were of no moment to her, and walked onto the landing, head held high. Hector started forward, as if to speak, but she brushed past him. The Conte d'Imola was ascending the stairs, eyes wide with shock and enquiry, and in this crisis she trusted more to the courier than to her own kin.

"These men are guards, from the palace," she said, conscious of the need to convey as much as possible in the few words she was likely to be allowed. "They wish to question me about Lady Diana's death. I do not know when I shall be at liberty to return. Look after our interests as best you can until I do. You have all the accounts and – here – " She unloosed her girdle and slipped her pocket off it, holding it out to the Conte. "Take my keys."

"These imbeciles think you may be the culprit?" he said, in Gaaldine, making no effort to disguise his incredulity. One of the guards, without warning, delivered an open-handed slap which left a reddening welt across the Conte's face.

"We'll have no insolence here. Hold your tongue, or you're next."

The Conte rounded on Hector, in a blur of velvet ferocity, speaking English now, an English so pure he could have been born and raised in her native Oxford. "And you, you pitiful whoreson! You're standing here and letting them take her?"

Elizabeth coughed. "Leave our mother out of it." She cast a withering glance at Hector. "He was her tragedy, not her fault."

The Conte nodded, weighed the pocket casually in his hand and slipped it inside his jerkin. "Be assured, I'll do my best to act in your stead in your absence. May God send you a good deliverance."

He looked at Dimmock and switched to Latin. "I do not owe you any courtesy and were your servant a gentleman I would demand satisfaction. But I will offer you some advice, nonetheless. You are in the process of making the biggest mistake of your life. It is not impossible it will be the last such mistake you make. I beg you to reconsider or, if you find that impossible, at least apprise the Crown Prince of your intention to question Mrs Pickering."

Dimmock stared at him. Then he laughed. "You forget yourself – _soprano_. Pray I do not chose to make you remember. We can't crush your bollocks, pretty boy, but I'll wager your fingers would remember our pilliwinks." He made a nut-crushing motion with finger and thumb. "So. Shut. It."

The Conte fell back a step. Elizabeth – shaking inwardly at the idea of the pilliwinks – summoned all her courage to cast a grateful smile in his direction. Absurd to hope for help from a foreigner who, for all she knew, had killed Lady Diana himself and, if he had not, should surely be more than happy to find the English party had found a scapegoat other than himself.

But – Hector was a broken reed, and who would listen to Frances; poor, plain, female and unmarried Frances? The Conte was her only hope.

"Let me escort my sister. It is my right and bounden duty." Hector's voice came out frail, fragmented and all of a rush. Elizabeth felt more fury than anything else. Dear God, she was being hauled off to torture and probable death, and Hector, damn his eyes, was still worried as to how his actions would look to the outside world?

She contained her seething soul in silence until they were at the street door, Outside a plain black carriage waited: the sort of carriage in which undistinguished, vanished people took their last journeys.

The coach door was flung open for her by one of the guards, and the step let down. She did not mistake it for courtesy – efficiency, merely.

Hector dogged her footsteps even that far, sobbing – whimpering, almost, turning his snuff-box over and over in his hands.

"Believe me, Elizabeth, I did nothing wrong. This was none of my doing."

"And, like Pilate, you wash your hands of it?" She had given him forgiveness too easily, too often. She raised a foot to the carriage step. It might be the last time she saw Hector, her only surviving brother. There had been six of them once. Nevertheless. Nevertheless.

"Hector, hear this. If you wished me to forgive you then you should have made an effort to defend me. Like a man." She paused. "Like, for example, the Conte d'Imola."

She put her second foot onto the carriage step and swung inside. The door slammed, the horses were set in motion and she jolted off towards an unknown fate.

………….

"I deeply regret, " Philip said, "that his grace the Envoy is at present not at liberty to receive you."

For perhaps the first time in the many, many times he had recited those words since arriving at the Legation, the regret was almost wholly unfeigned. Hatherleigh was staring at him with wide, dark-shadowed eyes, almost visibly shaking. If his companion, Sir Hector Bainbridge, hadn't been the _beau ideal_ of the obtuse English gentleman he'd have twigged something was wrong.

Philip cursed last night's impulse. Oh, it had been gratifying, demonstrating to Hatherleigh that he still had him exactly where he chose to put him, notwithstanding the lapse of years and Philip's blatant pursuit of the Crown Prince. Hotter than hell, too, not knowing who might come in and surprise them in the act (hoping it might be the Crown Prince).

But, still, a stupid impulse. Hatherleigh was as white as a girl and looked as if he might break down in hysterics at any moment. What the hell was going on? It couldn't be grief for his half-sister, surely. Hatherleigh had never expressed anything but contempt for his father's legitimate children, even when at Oxford. From what Philip could gather, the enforced proximity of the last six months had done nothing to change his opinion.

If only Lord Wardale had been on hand to take Sir Hector off Philip's hands and give him a chance to find out what ailed Hatherleigh.

"Dammit, man, is no-one at his post today?" Sir Hector fumed. "It was the same at the Palace last night. They fobbed me off with some little chirugeon fellow – sinister little blighter."

"John Watson, sir?" Philip found it hard to conceal his surprise. News, that, and not something his Palace sources had given him so far.

"I believe that was the name, yes. You've heard of him, then."

"He's the personal physician to the Crown Princess, Sir Hector." And a great deal more than that to her, if Palace rumour spoke truth. Though, if that were the case, Philip could hardly understand why the Royal family would keep such a potentially embarrassing person not merely in their orbit but in a position of real, if unspecified, influence. One always had to remember, though, that the three kingdoms lay on the junction of Europe and Asia; nothing could be predicted about how people behaved out here. When he had the Legation, it would pay to remember that fact.

If he had the Legation. If Hatherleigh didn't destroy them both. "Sir, our deepest condolences on your loss. How may the Legation assist?"

"They've taken m'sister." For a moment something human and fragile poked through Sir Hector's bluster. He took a large pinch of snuff, as if to conceal his emotion.

"I'm sorry, sir?"

"Man called Dimmock. Took her away in a carriage."

"That's the head of Palace security, sir. The Legation maintains close relations with the Palace on security issues." Philip hesitated, then picked his words with care. "Lady Wardale informed me last night of Lady Diana's decision to leave Mrs Pickering's chaperonage. Given what transpired, a man like Dimmock might well see something of a motive for ill-will there."

"Poppycock!" Sir Hector turned a nasty shade of puce. "Elizabeth understood the situation perfectly. The girl's attitude may have been a disappointment to her – I don't say it wasn't – but m'sister's a lady, bred in the bone. She would never have acted with anything other than dignity and restraint, were the provocation ten times worse. Anyway, she's an Englishwoman. They've got no business laying hands on her. You've got to make this Dimmock man see that."

Philip repressed the urge to tell this prosy old bore exactly what powers a small outpost of his Britannic Majesty's Government actually possessed, out here in the wilds with six superannuated troopers by way of defence force. Further, the time for making representations had been before Mrs Pickering had been taken, not now she'd vanished into Dimmock's clutches. Good God, they called the man "the Mastiff" in these parts. Once he'd got hold of someone no power on earth would make him drop them.

Besides, why should Philip squander diplomatic credit on a faded nobody like Elizabeth Pickering? A man who was in _de facto_ command of a Legation and hoped soon to add the form to the substance had to be selective with regard to those to whom he directed his concern.

He pasted a reassuring smile on his face. "Be assured, sir, that we'll pay the closest attention to your sister's welfare and bring you the earliest news about what transpires."

Sir Hector, fortunately, was the kind who heard what he wished to hear. He nodded.

"That's appreciated."

Besides him, Hatherleigh – either more alert to nuance or simply more on edge – quaked like a sick puppy. Time to take matters under control.

"Sir, the Legation chaplain will attend you directly. You will, no doubt, have much to discuss concerning the funeral arrangements, against the time – let us hope soon – when Lady Diana's body is released into your care. I trust that, far from England as we are, we can send back a report to the Duke of Collompton that to the poor best of our ability all that could be done, was done."

Sir Hector's look of alarm convinced Philip of his suspicions. No doubt prior to Dimmock's intervention he had expected to push all the work of the funeral onto his sister, reserving only the light duties of assuming the credit for the arrangements to himself.

Philip cleared his throat. "Mr Hatherleigh and I will, in the meantime, will do our utmost to relieve you of the more wearisome aspects of the paperwork, sir, while you and the Chaplain deal with the – ah – more spiritual side of matters."

The Legation chaplain, once fairly launched on the hardships of operating a Protestant enclave amid the besieging forces of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Mohammedanism, would hardly let Sir Hector escape his clutches inside a full turn of the glass.

Once the door had shut firmly behind Sir Hector and the chaplain, Philip turned to Hatherleigh. He found himself forestalled.

"Look – it's not that I don't appreciate what you tried to do, but how could you bring yourself? And what possessed you to return to the library after we parted in the first place?" Hatherleigh's voice sounded breathless, high-pitched; the sound of a man close to the edge of endurance.

Philip turned to rummage in a cupboard from which he pulled out a decanter and glasses. (One thing which could be said for the Legation under Lord Wardale; it would take an exceptional drought to make it run dry!) Only when he was certain he had his features schooled into calm neutrality did he turn back to face Hatherleigh.

"Here. Pour yourself one of those. And then tell me your side of what happened last night, from the very beginning." Hatherleigh looked as if he might remonstrate, but Philip glared at him. "Surely you owe me that, at least."

"Yes. Yes, I do. It was horrible, you can't think."

"And did you think?" The words came out like a whiplash. Hatherleigh cowered. Better. Essential to show him who was master. And to get a complete story out of him without betraying how little he knew.

"What option did I have? She heard us, Philip – she was right there in the library and she heard everything. She recognised my voice. She threatened me, Philip – she threatened us. I had no choice but to kill her. But I thought it would be over quickly, and instead it went on and on. She was gasping so loudly I thought someone would be bound to hear and come in."

Oh, dear God. Worse than he could possibly have imagined. Murder. And now Philip was fixed with knowledge of it, and could not un-know it. And, by the sound of it, no hope of washing his hands of it by handing Hatherleigh to the civil powers of Gaaldine and letting matters take their course.

"Lady Diana threatened us with exposure?" Best to be absolutely sure.

Hatherleigh nodded, his tongue flickering across dry lips, his eyes restless. "She'd been waiting in the last-but-one bay, hidden in the dark in that damn black dress and mask –"

"Black dress?" Philip demanded. Lady Diana had been wearing an absurdly ill-chosen riot of colours last night - Lady Wardale had confided that someone from the Court had said something ill-natured about it. But that had been in another lifetime, before a body had been discovered in the Palace library and his whole world become engulfed in nightmare.

"Black and red, but you saw it, you must have done, when you – when the face -"

Black and red. Dear God. The thing became worse by the second.

"Did you know she was wearing the Crown Princess' dress before she accosted you in the library?"

Hatherleigh's eyes spread even wider. "Dear God! Was that who she'd swapped with?"

"It explains why the Palace rumour merchants were so adamant this was a botched political assassination." Even though none of them had been able to pin down the likely culprit. Philip had heard Gondal, Angria and rebel factions within Gaaldine itself all blamed in the course of the night.

"Oh, God." Hatherleigh wrapped his arms around his chest. "I had no idea of any friendship between her and the Crown Princess."

"Nor I. But that's hardly material now."

Unless, of course, the Crown Princess influenced her husband to take an interest in the wretched girl's death. And she very likely could. The Crown Prince might care little or nothing for his wife's body, but her pretensions to the throne of Gondal must matter very much indeed to him. Especially now.

First things first. For whatever bizarre reason Hatherleigh had convinced himself that Philip had disfigured Lady Diana's face (who had? And for what motive?). No point in trying to disabuse him of the notion. However, one thing had to be made clear.

"Listen, until we know how things stand we must avoid each other as much as possible. We can't afford to have anyone starting to associate ideas."

Hatherleigh looked stricken, and Philip cursed, inwardly. Why had he not noticed before that the man was as weak as water?

"Look, I'll be working on it just as hard as I can. All you have to do is keep your head down and hope they focus on the Pickering woman. Or on political red herrings – I might see if I can send them after that castrato courier of yours, if they don't take the Pickering bait."

Hatherleigh nodded. And then, mercifully, one of the inner doors opened and Sir Hector and the chaplain emerged.

"Got everything settled, Hatherleigh?" Sir Hector enquired.

"I think we've covered everything that's needed, sir," Philip said.

Though there was, he reflected once he was alone, one thing which remained to be dealt with. If someone like Dimmock got hold of Hatherleigh, they were both lost. The threat of exposure would never go away, not while the man lived.

Something would have to be done about that.

………..

Frances knelt on the floor, careless of the damage she was doing to her skirts, and put her lips to the keyhole. "Grace! Let me out."

There came a creaking sound and the rustle of fabric from just outside the door. Grace must be kneeling in the passageway on the other side of the keyhole.

"Can't, miss. More than my place is worth. Sir Hector were that firm that you weren't to go rushing around 'till someone catches this monster –"

"Well, no-one's _going_ to catch this monster if those idiots think that Mama did it. We could all be murdered in our beds while they waste time asking her imbecile questions. You've got to let me out so I can go and get help."

"Look, miss, you didn't see the man who took her away. Big bully, with guards. Brushed past Sir Hector like he was nobody. It's going to take a lot to stop someone like that, once he's got the bit between his teeth."

"Let me get to –" Frances hesitated. The less Grace knew, the less she could reveal, if Sir Hector came back prematurely. "I've made friends in the city – they'll know what to do."

"That young man who knows Dr Atherton, miss? The one who came and fetched me last night, to help dress you? Well, he's nicely mannered, for a foreigner, I'll give him that."

Frances repressed the urge to comment that the Crown Prince would no doubt be gratified to hear Grace's endorsement. No point in antagonising the woman, not with a locked door between them.

"Him and his wife. I'm sure they'll be able to help, if I can only get to them personally."

Grace sounded as if she was pondering the matter. "I'll grant they can't do worse than we've got here, miss. It's been a madhouse since they took your lady mother, miss, it has that."

"So will you let me out?"

"Can't, miss. Sir Hector took the keys with him when him and Mr Hatherleigh went to the Legation, though goodness knows what sense they're expecting to get out of Lord Wardale this early in the day."

"Doesn't the Conte have a set of keys?"

"He rushed off, miss, just after they took your lady mother. Said something about going to light a candle for her at St Oneysimos' shrine. Well, he said 'rocket' but it must have been a candle he meant. I don't hold with papists, but I admit we could do with a miracle about now."

"We don't need divine intervention; we need me on the right side of this door and able to get to people who can actually help."

"Well, we haven't got any keys, miss, and wishing for them isn't going to get this door unlocked. So if I were you, miss, I'd lie down and have some rest until your uncle gets back." Grace paused. "Oh, there is one thing, miss. Don't be disturbed if you hear a ladder at the window in a little while."

"A _ladder_?"

"Aye, miss. After all, I'm sure your mother would want to make sure everything was done proper, given we've had a death in the house, even if she can't be here to oversee it, poor lady. And in the village where I came from, the day after a death you always made sure to have every mirror or scrap of glass in the house polished up. 'So as not to shame the angels, should they pass by,' my old gran used to say."

"Really," Frances breathed. "And this would include cleaning the windows?"

"We weren't rich enough to have glass in our windows at home, miss. But I think we should, miss. I'll have the landlady's boy do all round, now it's quiet. Mind you, I sometime think he's a bit lacking. Willing, mind you, but you set him a job and next thing you know he's wandered off on his own devices and it takes you half an hour to find him again. Still, he's the best we've got. So don't be too worried if you hear a ladder at the window presently."

"I'll bear it in mind. And I'll take your suggestion." Frances gave an elaborate, noisy yawn. "It has been a most exhausting and distressing time. I feel a headache coming on. Please could you let my uncle know that I have retired to rest and that I hope I will be more collected by dinner-time."

"That's very wise, miss. I'll see you aren't disturbed until then."


	9. Nine in a Dungeon

As the irons shifted from dark iron to glowing red and then white, their heat beat out across the room in ever more oppressive waves. They had stripped her to her shift when they brought her in here, one among the many humiliations of her position. Then they had bound her to a table. She could not turn her head. Deliberately, no doubt, the instruments occupied the majority of her field of vision. She could just glimpse the door, but it was shut and had been locked with an immense key.

Down here in this brick-lined chamber time had no meaning. She had passed through fear – how long ago? Terror lurked on the edge of her consciousness, ready to tear her apart should her defences flag for a moment. But simple fear – that was a tired remembrance of something she had once been capable of feeling.

One could choke back terror by anger, at least for a time. By love, too, she supposed. But love was too far away, and too fragile. Frances – God and his saints would surely have a mind to Frances. Maternal love could add little to her armour, and as for anything else, however unlooked for, that, it seemed, was doomed to perish still-born, in this grim room, deep beneath the earth, where no sunlight ever came.

Dimmock leant over her. "You will talk in the end. Why not now?"

"Talk is useless to people who aren't prepared to listen," Elizabeth spat. "I did not kill that girl and whatever you are proposing to do to me will not change that fact."

"Ah, you choose to be difficult. Believe me, ma'am, I deeply regret what you are making me do. But I do not regret it as much as you will."

"I am not a fool. If I had anything to tell you, I should have told it by now."

He turned and signalled to his assistants.

"Proceed."

They nodded. All the nerves in Elizabeth's body twitched at once. Now was the time for terror. It engulfed her, wave after paralysing wave.

She heard the grating sound of a key turning and then a clang as the door was flung wide. She craned her head and could just see two guards march in and stand either side of it. Then the Count d'Houx. Then a third guard.

Dead silence fell on the room. And then, with a rustling of fabric and – Elizabeth thought – an audible creaking of joints, Dimmock and his three assistants dropped to their knees. The Count's third guard walked forward, a poignard in his hand. It must have been razor sharp. Elizabeth's bonds parted before its edge like cheese beneath a wire. She struggled up into a sitting position, suddenly horribly conscious that she was dressed in nothing but her shift before the gaze of eight men.

The Count stalked up, unslung his own cloak and wrapped it around her body. Somewhere in the room someone – Elizabeth prayed it was Dimmock – let out a sound that could only be described as a stifled sob.

She heard the sound of marching feet. A moment later the Count's brother, Dr Atherton's correspondent, entered the room flanked by two guards.

"You're late," the Count said.

"Later than you were," the new arrival corrected. "But I would not, I think, have been too late."

He glanced at Dimmock, who quivered, visibly. The Count nodded.

"No. Not too late." He glanced round the room. "This matter is not for discussion. Other matters will be, in due course. " He looked at his brother. "Charis is now looking after Frances Pickering?"

"Indeed. Miss Pickering very sensibly came straight to Charis for help when she found her mother had been taken away, though she had to climb out of a window to do so. That idiot Sir Hector had had her tiring maid lock her in, allegedly for her own protection. May I ask Charis to look after Mrs Pickering also?"

 _Charis._ The Crown Princess of Gaaldine. The putative Queen of Gondal. There could only be a handful of people in the kingdom with the rank to refer to her by her first name, and two of them were in this chamber with her now. And both of them were on her side.

Elizabeth's limbs were trembling with reaction. She only wanted to fall flat on some bed and weep. The discussion above her head seemed curiously distant. Someone would take her somewhere and she would be safe. But she could not walk there.

"Allow me," the Count said, as if reading her thoughts.

He was not a count, of course, or not merely a count, but Elizabeth could not comprehend who he must be, not yet, not now. Especially not when he stepped forwards and swung her up into his arms, taking her weight as if it were nothing.

At which point Dimmock did whimper.

"I've a carriage outside," the Count's brother said. "I expect you have, also, but mine will be quicker and prying eyes will make less of it. May I offer you its services?"

The Count nodded. He still had her in her arms and she knew she was no lightweight but she could think of no place she would rather be.

"Good, then. Let us be away."

There followed a bewildering sequence of events in which the only constant was the reassuring pressure of the Count's arms. The carriage's blinds were not thrown up until it had entered a secluded courtyard. It was empty apart from the Count's brother, who must have gone ahead on horseback, and who opened the carriage door himself.

"Could you contrive to walk if we both supported you?" he enquired. "My brother has already astounded me with his exertions today, but I have no desire to find myself unexpectedly inheriting his job. Accordingly, I propose to veto his carrying you up another flight of stairs."

"I will try," she murmured.

"We'll take matters very slowly. Come."

Although Elizabeth knew she must be in the Palace, she recognised nothing of the route. This must be an older part of the Palace complex, a place of winding staircases and broad, sunlit landings, with none of the ostentation of the public rooms where she had danced last night. Like the courtyard, the rooms through which the two men guided her shaky steps appeared deserted, though doors swung open at their approach and closed behind them once they had passed.

She knew, now, beyond a shadow of doubt who had lain with her in the belvedere, even as she recoiled at the enormity of that knowledge. A noble – a great state official, say – might have had the power to snatch her out of Dimmock's interrogation. But to walk unescorted and unchallenged through the private family apartments of the Palace – mere nobility and authority would never suffice for that.

"Did you ever plan to tell me you were really the King?"

The man pacing with slow grace by her left hand side looked a trifle embarrassed.

"I am truly the Count d'Houx, also. I did not misrepresent that fact."

The man on her right – the Crown Prince, she now realised – gave an amused snort. The King glared at him. "And you, Sherlock, have such a pristine record when it comes to the use of aliases? I'm considering issuing a court dispatch condoling with you on your equerry Count Osric's untimely death in an accident involving a farmyard midden and two exceptionally aggressive goats."

"Oh, please, can you leave me to investigate the one untimely death we've actually got? In which, incidentally, Dimmock's idiocy has given us the luckiest of chances. The real murderer will be far more off his or her guard now they think we have fastened on Mrs Pickering as the culprit. If I'd thought, I'd have planned it this way."

"I do not see it in that light." The King's voice was low and dangerous.

The Crown Prince paused, then nodded. "Had I planned it, I would not have put you through such great distress, ma'am. Nevertheless, this may work out to our advantage. My wife will be more than happy to have you and your daughter as our guests, but if we could ensure that your stay remains incognito, it will increase immensely our chances of capturing the murderer."

Gradually, Elizabeth had begun to revive. Now that she was out of danger it occurred to her for the first time to wonder at something.

"Sir, you never chose to ask me any questions. And yet – may God forgive me – I did detest Lady Diana and I had quarrelled with her on that evening. Can you tell me, truly, that you never suspected I might have killed her?"

The Crown Prince glanced at the King, as if seeking permission.

"I did not rule you out as a suspect for some time," he said carefully. "The time at which the girl was killed – not when she was found for the first time and her face disfigured, which was somewhat later – you must have been still in the Palace itself. And, as you yourself point out, you had a sufficient motive. But it early became clear – at least to me – that you must have left the ball in my brother's company."

Her hand went to her lips. "Oh," she managed.

The Crown Prince smiled. "He doesn't make a habit of it, I assure you."

"And, if I did, I'd still thank you for not discussing it," the King snapped. "Yes. I leapt at the opportunity of enjoying something practically every other man in Gaaldine takes for granted; the chance to spend an evening in the company of a sympathetic and intelligent woman, unhampered by the barrier of my position."

"Not strictly my field, but I take the point. Well, ma'am, that settled it. The most hardened villain could not have spent an evening in my brother's company immediately after committing murder and not have it detected."

"I'm relieved you appreciate that," the King said. The brothers smiled at each other, and Elizabeth felt as if the sun had come out after rain so prolonged one had forgotten what blue sky looked like.

And then they were at the door of the Crown Princess's suite and there was Frances – dear, _good_ , intelligent Frances, who would have saved her had the King not done so. ("I would not have been too late," the Crown Prince had said, and the King had agreed.)

She fell into her daughter's arms and they wept. When they were more composed, Elizabeth stood back and found the Crown Princess hovering enthusiastically besides her.

"I wasn't sure what was needed but I have ordered my tiring woman to attend on you shortly with some gowns which I hope will be suitable and ordered you a bath in the meantime. We will have a private family dinner later, in this suite – all tremendously informal, of course, in the circumstances."

Elizabeth reflected that "private" and "informal" clearly bore a very different meaning when the other diners comprised a reigning monarch, his heir presumptive and an aspirant to the throne of the neighbouring kingdom. And then she caught the King's eye upon her, knowing he had caught her very thought, and that it amused him.

She smiled back.

……….  
"I'm sure," John said in a resigned way, "that you have a perfectly logical reason for missing dinner so as to hare out to the English party's lodgings disguised as this Mrs Sigerson's footman, but doesn't it occur to you that it might be easier just to tell Sir Hector that his niece is under Charis' chaperonage?"

"Easier, John, but not nearly so much fun." Sherlock flashed him a smile which would certainly have had the footman whom he was counterfeiting turned out of doors for presumption. He was rewarded by a flicker of amusement in response; the most relaxation John had allowed his features to assume since the horrors of the discovery in the library. The shadow of _what might have been_ had hung over his spirits ever since. For that alone Sherlock had no intention of forgiving Dr Atherton.

"You're investigating a murder. Fun isn't supposed to come into it."

Sherlock shrugged. "I take my pleasures where I find them. Anyway, my strategy depends on Sir Hector not realising his niece has influence at Court. Now Elizabeth Pickering's apparently vanished into Dimmock's custody without hope of release I've every expectation the murderer will become overconfident and make a mistake."

John's brow furrowed as he digested this.

"And the Sigerson business?"

"Sir Hector has a keen sense of propriety, or at least values the appearance of it. He'll need assurances that his niece is respectably lodged. If he enquires at the Palace, he'll find that one Stephen Sigerson holds the eminently worthy post of Keeper of the Royal Bees."

"He does?" John enquired with heavy emphasis.

"Oh, yes. Appointed back in my grandfather's day. He's about a hundred years old by now and madder than moonlight. And, of course, never comes anywhere near the capital. Not enough bees here, obviously." Unbidden, the memory came of fields of clover and the steady hum arising from them, as the old man – seemingly more weathered and ancient even than the Castle ruins on the hill – quoted Georgics and initiated a small, lonely boy into the endlessly fascinating mysteries of apiculture.

"And Mrs Sigerson?"

"If you ask Court sources, they'd probably assume she's the wife of young Mr Sigerson. He's a great-nephew, or some shadowy connection of that nature. Lives a quiet life – he's a private gentleman of modest means – in a town-house hard by the Cathedral, when he isn't in the country assisting his great-uncle."

"Well, I'm glad we've got our Sigerson family history straight. But I'm still perplexed why you're pretending to be _anyone's_ footman."

"Invisibility. People don't look at servants."

"I'll remind you that 'people' in this instance include Hatherleigh. In that livery – especially those silk hose – I think you might be surprised."

Had he imagined the waspish note in John's voice? His smile was intended to reassure, this time.

"Trust me, I'll be careful." And then a thought struck him, and he cursed himself for his stupidity. It had, after all, been staring him in the face all yesterday evening. But if that lay behind Diana Scoton's death, cracking the mystery would depend on concentrating his firepower on the weaker vessel. Which made the success of his current subterfuge even more important.

Jenkins ushered him into a small reception room on the ground floor and bade him gruffly to wait Sir Hector's convenience. The manservant spoke a halting kitchen Gaaldine which, nonetheless, suggested to Sherlock's experienced ear that he had a fair knowledge of the language, for understanding if not for speech.

There was something slightly ruffled about Jenkins' dress; not neglect, but something which came within breathing distance of carelessness. Sherlock discerned a slight roughness about his voice and redness around the eyes which might, perhaps, be an incipient cold but seemed more likely to be the marks of grief.

Sherlock was not a man much given to reflecting on human emotion (the paths it led down were ones he had learned young were too painful to tread). Still, it struck him as a bitter jest that the first mark of sincere grief for Lady Diana Scoton's death he had seen should be from someone she would, in life, scarcely have acknowledged as human.

Jenkins vanished, leaving him to cool his heels. There was little to be deduced from the room, though its windows were polished to a high shine. Grace Vinson, it seemed, was thorough. It would be interesting to question her. Not in this current disguise, though. No-one was harder to fool when impersonating a servant than another of the same rank, and Grace Vinson had twice seen him at close quarters dressed as a gentleman.

Mrs Sigerson's footman would have been fully entitled to feel indignant on his mistress' behalf at Sir Hector's delay in responding to her message. The detached intelligence which analysed that fact and adjusted the footman's stance – just a trifle – to convey ruffled dignity also noted that Frances Pickering's disappearance could not have been discovered yet.

Sir Hector's eventual arrival had all the flurried pomposity Sherlock had expected. Greatly to Sherlock's amusement, it appeared that Sir Hector's limited linguistic gifts had collapsed entirely amid the stresses of the last day and a half. After a futile few moments of sustained non-communication in a combination of slowly spoken Gaaldine and pidgin English at ever increasing volume, Sir Hector lost patience and rang the bell for the Conte d'Imola to act as translator.

Irene, bless her, reacted to Sherlock's presence with no more than a slight widening of the eyes. She listened impassively to his detailed, yet stiffly formal account of how "the English mees Peekering" had sought refuge with his mistress Mrs Sigerson (long digression here into the ancient lineage, respectability and generosity of the Sigerson family as a whole and Mrs Sigerson in particular). She made a couple of interjections, for form's sake, and then turned to Sir Hector, who had become more irritable during the whole performance, as if his inability to understand the language was their fault.

"This man is footman to a Mrs Sigerson. I know a little of the family; they have connections at Court, though not very elevated ones."

"And what business do the Sigersons have with us?"

"It seems that Miss Pickering met Mrs Sigerson on one of her nature rambles shortly after arriving in Gaaldine and they became friends. Accordingly, when her mother was taken for questioning, she sought assistance from the Sigersons, and they offered her hospitality until – as we all hope – Mrs Pickering is released from custody. After all, without her mother's chaperonage, she can hardly stay in a household which includes no other woman of rank, and two unmarried gentleman – besides myself – to whom she is not related."

Sherlock considered the "besides myself" to be a particularly artistic touch on Irene's part, forcing Sir Hector, as it did, to contemplate matters he would doubtless prefer to avoid. He attempted to conceal his confusion with a vigorous application of snuff. (Old-gold snuff-box, monogram of his initials on lid. Interesting.)

"Good heavens, man," Sir Hector said, once he had finished sneezing and was himself once more, "this is arrant nonsense. My niece is upstairs in her room with a headache – has been since this morning."

"Is she?" Irene enquired. "Would it not be wise to check?"

Sherlock assumed an attitude of patient non-comprehension during the pointless and prolonged argument which followed, which ended – as, of course it was always going to end – with an expedition upstairs and the discovery that Frances Pickering's room was empty.

The interval was not without interest. It enabled him to refine the impressions of the English party he'd started to make overnight. The Viscount staggered in, greenish-white and clearly in the grip of an epic hangover (Sherlock's gut clenched in fury; Mrs Sigerson's footman ducked a respectful head). Dr Atherton; oozing a vague, generalised concern, nevertheless projected a faint sense of smugness, as if Mrs Pickering's removal by Dimmock's men had somehow validated his violent destruction of the dead girl's face. Hatherleigh he glimpsed only long enough to note that John's concern had been quite misplaced; locked in some private hell, the Viscount's secretary would not have noticed Sherlock had he stood naked in the withdrawing room.

It took three-quarters of a turn of the glass before Sir Hector was finally persuaded to accept not merely that his niece was nowhere in the house but that the explanation for her absence given by Mrs Sigerson's footman might bear further investigation.

Irene seized upon Sir Hector's first moment of weakness on the topic. Like a violin virtuoso, she played expertly on his ruffled nerves, his uneasiness about his linguistic abilities, his precarious dignity as an island of Englishness amid an encroaching sea of foreign confusion and his pressing need to remain at home to deal with the continued difficulties of Lady Diana's death.

At length her persuasion prevailed. The Conte d'Imola, armed with a stern missive from Sir Hector to his niece, left the house in the impassive company of Mrs Sigerson's footman.

They made it at far as the nearest corner before Irene broke silence.

"Well? What's going on?"

Sherlock, in character, remained a pace behind Irene and with eyes faced relentlessly forward. An observer could hardly have seen his lips move.

"The King commends your initiative, earlier today."

"What –?"

"You took Elizabeth Pickering's pocket, saw the note she'd received, the seal accompanying it and followed those instructions." He paused. "As matters turned out, it wasn't entirely needed, but trust me, I am not speaking only for myself when I say our House owes you a favour of almost infinite scope."

"Really? Why?"

Blast the woman! Anyone with any sensitivity would have detected his reticence. And Irene was not without sensitivity. Fortunately, he had other weapons at his disposal.

"That's of no account. Speaking specifically –" He hesitated. "It is towards the end of the sailing season. The weather is unpredictable. Nevertheless, we pay a handful of madmen extremely well to be at our disposal at all times to risk their lives and their vessels if we ask. If – hypothetically – you were shortly to receive vital information which you needed to pass to Rome or beyond – you have earned the right to use those resources."

She turned towards him.

"Why would you aid my mission?"

He kept his eyes facing forward. "Not for its own sake. I've told you before, Irene, the house of Stuart is a broken reed. It will betray you, if you let it. Or drag you down in its own ruin. But – you are doubtless familiar with the expression, 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend'? I wish to see the Duke of Collompton destroyed, utterly; his life and estates equally forfeit to his King, his name rendered infamous, his house at an end. Mycroft and I are in complete agreement on the point. We have the means to do so. We know - and can prove - his complicity in the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, and through whom he channelled his support. But it must not be traceable to Gaaldine."

She nodded, slowly. "May I ask why?"

"The sins of the children are to be visited on the fathers. It is a matter of honour. And, no; no further details. But hold yourself ready to travel at short notice. And if I ask you to convey a note to a member of your party, and to obscure where it originated, may I call on you to do that, also? Excellent."


	10. Ten of the Morning and All Awry

Hatherleigh flexed his hands and wondered if he was imagining the cramping ache in his finger joints. Horrible. The image of Lady Diana's face, mottled, swollen and ugly beneath the frantic pressure of his thumbs had been a constant presence throughout last night's dreams. Small wonder if the memory clung to his flesh, also.

The sun slanted brightly through the window. No-one had called him. Presumably the Viscount had given orders not to be disturbed – he had, after all, chosen to drink himself into insensibility yesterday evening, also. And, the Viscount being absent – in spirit if not in body – perhaps no-one had had cause to recall Hatherleigh's existence, either?

For some reason, that thought seemed almost more painful than anything else. He kicked his sluggish body into life just as his bedroom door swung open and Jenkins, bearing a tray on which rested eggs, ham and toast said, "Sir? Sorry to trouble you, sir, but Sir Hector will be needing you. There have been letters and flowers and such flooding in since yesterday, and with Mrs Pickering away, he's finding it hard to answer them. Breakfast, sir."

It was, briefly, a relief to stir into anger. "Why wasn't I called earlier?"

Jenkins glanced at him. "Sorry, sir. There seemed no call not to let you have your sleep out, and I thought – well, if you'll excuse my mentioning it, sir, I know there are reasons you might be taking her ladyship's death harder than some."

 _Reasons?_ For a moment Hatherleigh tottered on the edge of madness. What could Jenkins have seen – guessed – known?

"Not that I'd ever say anything to his lordship, sir, it wouldn't be my place. Not if his grace didn't wish it. But – if you'll forgive the liberty, sir – your family feelings do you nothing but credit. More than can be said for some people."

He set the tray down on the table and sidled out crab-wise, as if afraid to be betrayed by his emotions into straying even further from his proper sphere.

Hatherleigh sat on the edge of his bed, driving the heels of his hands into his shut eyes. Of course, Jenkins had been a servant at St Jerome's before he had accompanied Sir Hector to Oversbank. College servants, notoriously, knew everything. But to have travelled so far in his company, and never to have dropped a hint that he knew Hatherleigh's true parentage - God, what a card player the man would have made, if his Puritan conscience had allowed.

Sick misery overwhelmed him. Jenkins, plainly, had no idea as to his other, darker secrets but how long before a man of such shrewdness detected something amiss, something more than grief for Lady Diana? His whole position was that of a man sitting on the edge of a volcano. Either the lip would crumble away beneath him or the flames roar up and engulf him. He sat there a long time, his breakfast congealing on the plate, until at length Sir Hector's bellow from below recalled him to his duties. He hastily finished dressing, and swept his hand across the stand to gather his personal possessions into his pocket.

"Jenkins!"

The servant popped his head round the door and grimaced at the uneaten breakfast. "Sir?"

"What the devil's become of my snuff-box?"

Jenkins shuffled his feet. "Sorry, sir. I'll get it." He returned a few seconds later. "Here, sir. I've found it helps, sir, to keep occupied. Stops my mind turning over so much. I started by cleaning the silverware and the ladies' jewellery – " For a moment his voice caught, and Hatherleigh was horribly afraid the man might break down. He recovered himself with an effort. "Not much left to polish, sir, now I've done the snuff-boxes and all the buttons."

Sudden insight forced Hatherleigh to speak. "You loved her, didn't you?"

Jenkins turned bright scarlet. "I never said nothing out of place, sir. She never knew a thing about it. You'll not let on to his lordship or Sir Hector, sir, please."

Hatherleigh shook his head. Doubtless the sanctimonious Jenkins would never have dreamt of offering any such promise had it been Hatherleigh's illicit loves that were in question. And, as for the woman herself – if she had cared about discretion, or even understood the nature of love, the whole tragedy need never have happened. But, still, the man had never done him harm and Hatherleigh owed him some recompense for his loss.

Sir Hector bellowed again; Hatherleigh dropped his snuff-box into his pocket and scrambled downstairs. It occurred to him, some time later, that Jenkins had been right. The routine of dealing with correspondence, of composing nicely judged responses in three separate languages did help settle his mind.

Until he happened to find amid the pile a letter addressed to him, written in a fine scholar's hand, the language being Latin and the message unequivocal.

_You and he whom you met at the Sign of the Heavenly Twins were not as discreet as you hoped. Rumours are carried by the autumn winds and those winds blow strong for England. Those within this kingdom who have no love for the English King advise you and your friend to take care. Those who would turn rumours into accusations are closer than you think._

Sir Hector, stupid as he was, had noticed the pause.

"Hatherleigh? Are you well?"

"As well as can be expected, sir. All things considered. But I wonder, sir, if I might be better deployed elsewhere? You, sir, are tied to your duties here. I, however, could perhaps drop by the Legation, and see if they might have news of your sister? Sir?"

……

"I told you to avoid the Legation. No-one must suspect we have anything more than the most casual of acquaintance."

"Too late for that. Look here."  
"Dear God – "

"I agree." Hatherleigh glared at Derwent. "Don't say anything. Unless it is very much to the point. Forget everything which has happened since. When we met in the _Gemini_ wine-shop, you assured me there was no conceivable possibility that anyone would know what was said there. You _promised._ "

"What do you think I am? Would I for a moment have given such a promise had I known myself forsworn?"

"Conceivably." Whence had that coldness sprung? Wherever it was, he welcomed it; hitherto he had always found it too easy to be distracted in Derwent's presence. Not for the first time, he wondered if Derwent exploited that. "I need truth, here. And help. Who among our circles might be a spy for James?"

"None at the Legation." Derwent frowned as the door swung open to admit the chaplain and a tall, elderly man in rusty black robes.

"Ah, Derwent. And Mr Hatherleigh, this is opportune." The chaplain indicated his companion. "May I commend you to Sir Franklin Evans, who is deputising for the King's coroner? He brings – well, one can hardly call them _good_ tidings, in the circumstances. But welcome – that, I think we can say. Yes, I venture to call it welcome news."

Hatherleigh looked up. "Such news being, sir?"

The coroner cleared his throat. He had a high, quavering voice and a curious way of biting off his phrases, as if measuring each by rule. "I am bidden by the King to inform you that the examination of Lady Diana Scoton's body have been concluded. There exists no barrier to her funeral progressing as soon as it may be arranged. To that end, I have instructed two of my staff to transport the corpse to the Legation. Unless, perhaps, her family believe it would be best to have the body lie in the Protestant chapel until it can be interred, to allow those so minded to pay their respects? It would, of course, have to lie within a closed coffin, given the damage to the face."

The image was, abruptly, so vivid that Hatherleigh gagged. The coroner looked at him; the rheumy grey eyes sharper than he had expected. "You are concerned the warmth of the last few days may, perhaps, have accelerated the natural processes to an unpleasant degree? Fear not, sir. The Palace morgue has been constructed with an admirable eye to such matters – I have travelled extensively and I flatter myself that here in Gaaldine we can stand with any of the capitals of Europe in the excellence of our arrangements. Chambers tiled throughout, sir, all below ground level and cold water let in from the river into lead-lined chilling tanks below our slabs. We've had bodies there for a week in the height of summer and still as fresh as midwinter when we came to bury them."

"Excuse me," Hatherleigh choked out, raising his handkerchief to his lips and stumbling out into the passageway.

Derwent found him there. "Don't say anything. Come with me."

A supportive hand propelled him up the stairs into Derwent's own chamber. He sat on the edge of the bed while Derwent found him a glass of brandy.

"I'm sorry –"

"You should be. Without me to cover your back, where would you be?" Derwent's voice lacked the sting of his words; Hatherleigh even detected a hint of warmth. "I did my best to imply that, as you and Lady Diana had travelled together for months, there might have been something beyond companionship in your feeling for her."

" _What_? Are you mad?"

Derwent shrugged. "Who out here will know any different? Not even the Viscount knows your parentage. Anyway, it sufficed. Fortunately, even the chaplain was young once. And that dessicated old vulture of a coroner, hard as it is to credit. Drink your brandy. It's Lord Wardale's best.. Which reminds me – give me your snuff-box and I'll refill it before you leave."

"And the letter?" Hatherleigh said dully.

"Leave that to me. Someone must have smuggled that letter into your lodgings. Probably trying to panic you into doing something stupid. My betting is that courier fellow of yours knows more than he's letting on. You picked him up in Rome, didn't you? And he's a Papal count, or claims to be. It ties up."

"Do you think so?"

"Well, someone like that's bound to be in someone's pay and we may be able to beat out of him who it is. It gets dark early, this time of year. And I've got connections in the city through whom it may be arranged. But now, man, pull yourself together and come downstairs to tell the chaplain what's needed for the funeral."

…….

"A meeting at the Palace?" Sir Hector's eyes bulged; Irene thought for a moment he might be about to succumb to an apoplexy.

"So this man says." She turned to the footman who, so far as she could tell (having, by now, some considerable experience) was a perfectly genuine member of the Palace staff.

"By whose command are we bidden there?"

"It is the Crown Prince's most especial request that all your party attend on him there within the hour. Without fail, sir."

Irene translated the information, laying particular emphasis on the "without fail". Goodness only knew what the party assumed the relevant penalties available to a prince of Gaaldine were; barbaric, extensive and painful, she only hoped.

"Is there news?" Sir Hector groped inside his pocket for his snuff-box.

The footman seemed to have been expecting such a request; he was shaking his head almost as soon as she began to speak.

"It would seem not."

"Well, then, as it's a royal command, I suppose we have no choice." He glanced down at the old-gold box in his hand, made two strides to the door, and bellowed, "Jenkins! You imbecile! Come here at once!"

Irene looked narrowly at the footman. "By 'all', do I take it your master means to include the servants?"

"My master was most insistent upon the point, sir. 'All of the party who arrived in Gaaldine, with the exception of the corpse.'"

Clearly a direct quotation, though as the Conte d'Imola she could hardly be expected to know it. No matter. She coughed, drily. "Well, I can see that his grace might reasonably feel her ladyship _had_ outstayed her welcome at the Palace. Especially given the temperature of the last two days."

"Sir." The footman's face was wooden. "I can testify milord's concern is misplaced."

Well, she supposed she'd asked for that. Sir Hector, fortunately, was still fully engaged in haranguing Jenkins for some minor error – something to do with misplaced property – and the servant's fulsome excuses covered the exchange.

"Some of our party are out in the city. An hour gives little time for us to gather them together. Mr Hatherleigh, for example, is at the Legation, making arrangements for the funeral." She paused, and then added, blandly, "And Miss Pickering is lodging with Mr and Mrs Sigerson, while her mother is away."

"Sir, I understand that the Palace have already sent word to Mr Sigerson's dwelling. Miss Pickering's arrival at the Palace is likely to be earlier than your own."

Impossible to tell anything behind that carved mask. The Palace's people were _good_. Paid to be so, of course, but in Irene's experience payment only took one so far. The Palace's people were better than payment could explain.

"Have they also alerted the Legation?"

"I understand, sir, that milord Hatherleigh –" (The footman pronounced it "Haffasslee" – Irene immediately found it burnt onto her brain) "- has already left the Legation, doubtless to return here. Though his grace milord Sir Hector may wish to despatch his man to find him, and advise him of my master's command and of the need for haste. But, sir, it is my master's especial request that news of this meeting is not bruited abroad to those not invited to attend. I was to say that he entrusts to your good discretion, sir, to manage your companions to achieve that."

"Be sure to advise your master that my discretion is fully at his command."

The footman bowed and took his leave.

Having despatched Jenkins to find Hatherleigh, Irene, on the excuse of changing into clothes more suited for the Palace, made for her room. Her travelling bag had been three-quarters packed since Sherlock's warning yesterday; she made her final preparations and laced it closed, concealing it within a chest.

She gave a final glance around the spare, simply furnished room. Somehow she rather suspected she would not be sleeping here tonight. The game had taken a new turn; whatever Sherlock planned would profoundly affect them all. Excitement tingled down her nerves. He had promised, yesterday, to aid her mission. Now came the time when he would make good on that.


	11. Eleventh Hour Dramatics

"I leave you here," the King said. "My brother detests being upstaged. Whatever he has planned – and he has not shared his thoughts with me – my presence would surely be an impediment." He paused beside an unremarkable door. "You should know, however, that the Palace possesses numerous chambers and passages of which our visitors are unaware. You will not see me, but be assured, ma'am, I shall be close at hand."

Her mouth was dry. Oddly enough, it was the prospect of seeing her brother again which caused her the most profound dread, not the thought of entering the room where Lady Diana had died or the threat of whatever the Crown Prince held over them.

The King reached out and clasped her hand. "It is hard for you, I know. But, with many things one dreads, the reality is often less harsh than one fears, and over more quickly." His expression became sardonic. "In any event, it is not you at whom my brother will be directing his batteries. But have a care. Don't be caught in the cross-fire. Stay close to John, should trouble happen."

"John?"

"John Watson. The Crown Princess' physician. A man of unparalleled honour. And courage. When the annals of these days come to be written – " The King paused. "No matter. I am not, you understand, expecting trouble. But death breeds death, and my brother – has a nose for death."

She shivered. His smile aimed to reassure but his troubled eyes belied the intent. On impulse, she stretched up to her toe-tips and kissed his cheek. His eyes widened; he seemed, for the moment, about to say something, but then he ducked his head, turned the handle of the door and slipped inside. Elizabeth proceeded alone into the library.

The great inlaid table had been removed. It left a space in the end bay which was now fringed by a half-circle of chairs. The appearance was that of a stage set for a Court diversion; not an elaborate masque but something more intimate, like juggling or fire-eating. Or, she thought grimly, the telling of fortunes.

The only person in the room, a sandy-haired man in surprisingly plain and well-worn robes, rose, bowed and handed her to a seat on his left hand side.

"John Watson," he said cheerfully. "You are Mrs Pickering, I presume, ma'am? We were supposed to meet at dinner yesterday, but Sherlock had me running all over the city. I should be used to it by now, of course, but somehow I never seem to remember how very little time he allows for anything else. Like food. And sleep."

Before she could say anything, the library door opened and Frances stole in; apparently from the stables, to judge by the mud on the petticoat visible beneath her gown's hem. Elizabeth shot her daughter a minatory glare, and Frances, perceptively, sank into the chair beside her without a word.

The door opened again to admit Mr Hatherleigh and Jenkins, both of whom looked first flustered and, then, inordinately relieved to discover they were not the last to arrive. Jenkins seemed horrified at the thought of being invited to sit in the presence of the quality, but John Watson would hear no argument and at length Jenkins accepted the seat on one end of the semi-circle, sitting on the extreme edge of the chair and biting his lips.

Elizabeth gave a welcoming smile to Mr Hatherleigh and waved an inviting hand towards the chair on Frances' far side. Having been absent from their lodgings when Dimmock arrested her yesterday (could it really only have been yesterday?) he was one of the few members of her party whom she was genuinely glad to see again. Poor boy! He was clearly taking Lady Diana's death very hard; he looked as if the simple kindness of a smile was almost enough to snap him in two. Had the little minx managed to break his heart, as well as poor Jenkins'?

Speculation on the point was interrupted by the arrival of Dr Atherton, who greeted her in an abrupt and inexplicably awkward manner (How could she possibly have mistaken the King for him? A shadow, a wraith, a clay simulacrum) and took a seat on the other end of the semi-circle.

The final members of the party – Hector, the Viscount and the Conte d'Imola, trailed by Grace – arrived in a rush some moments later. Frances captured Grace and persuaded Mr Hatherleigh to move along one place, so they could sit next to each other. Elizabeth stretched her hand across her daughter to clasp Grace's arm.

"Thank you exceedingly for everything you have done to keep the household running under such trying circumstances," she said. "I particularly appreciated your efforts to ensure the windows were cleaned."

Grace nodded, but if she had intended to say anything she was forestalled by a howl of outrage from the far side of the library.

"You insult me, sir, you insult me. Have you any idea who my father is, you demmed foreign bonesawyer?"

Elizabeth glanced across the room, to the source of the riot. The Viscount stood, gesticulating, his face bare inches from John Watson's. It seemed the court physician had opted to assign the Viscount a chair next to Jenkins, who was, if anything, even more distressed by the proximity.

The physician leant forward to whisper something in the Viscount's ear. Whatever it was, it had the younger man flopping down into his chair white-faced and without any further attempt at argument. For the next few minutes his eyes flickered between the physician and, oddly, Frances; his expression bordering on panic, his hand clenching and unclenching on the arm of his chair.

Elizabeth had had six months of the Viscount's moods; peacocking displays, sulks, drunken rages and storming tantrums. She had never before seen him subdued (even when hungover, his natural arrogance somehow kept him buoyant) let alone intimidated. Nor could she understand how an unpretending court physician, lacking noble rank, could cow him so.

She slid a glance at her daughter but nothing about Frances' demeanour suggested that she was anything but baffled, either. Not that she had long to consider it.

With a sudden scrape of chairs and clatter of heels on the polished floor everyone rose. The Crown Prince had arrived in the room, without forewarning or any hint as to how he had entered ( _The Palace possesses numerous chambers and passages of which our visitors are unaware_ , a voice in Elizabeth's head reminded her.)

"Pray, be seated." The Crown Prince's voice was a cool drawl. He stalked to the front of the room, elegant in black taffeta full-skirted coat and breeches after the French style, a damascened scimitar swinging at his hip, very much after the style of the East.

He positioned himself against the bookcase and then looked down at the floorboards at his feet. He gave the tiniest start of reaction and, fastidiously, moved a foot or so to his right. Elizabeth, who thought most stage acting dreadfully overdone, admired his subtlety. Somewhere in the room someone inhaled, sharply.

"Thank you for coming here at such short notice," the Crown Prince said, in English. "You are no doubt wondering why I have invited you."

 _Most assuredly._ Elizabeth, though, had not the slightest intention of enquiring. Hector, on the other hand –

"What news is there, sir? Has the monster who struck down that poor, innocent maiden been found?"

The Crown Prince looked at him up and down before, after a long age, responding.

"I hope to see that individual apprehended before the day is out."

 _And, Hector, if you cannot see the threat in that, you are a bigger fool even than I fear._ Once more a shiver ran down Elizabeth's spine. She could not follow the workings of the Crown Prince's mind – it would be a lifetime's study for anyone. Still, the meeting – called on conditions of secrecy, only the members of the English party present – spoke to her deepest fear. As, for that matter, had the King's unspoken but palpable anxiety earlier.

 _One of the people in this room is a murderer._

"In order to ensure that outcome, I have prepared an experiment." The Crown Prince turned aside, dismissing Sir Hector, and beckoned to Frances. She rose to her feet with an alacrity that told her mother she had been primed in advance.

 _By the Crown Princess. In the stables. Much becomes clear._

"Miss Pickering is of very similar height and build to the Crown Princess, my wife. Lady Diana, also, was of similar height, and while she had a somewhat fuller figure the difference was not so great as to prevent any one of the three women from swapping clothes with either of the others. Miss Pickering is, in fact, wearing one of my wife's dresses now, though not the one she wore on the night of the ball."

He sounded distinctly put out; Elizabeth had a sudden, horribly vivid vision of her daughter telling the Crown Prince that, whether or not it wrecked his experiment, she would under no circumstances don the dress in which Lady Diana had been murdered.

"Still," the Crown Prince continued grudgingly, "it is a reasonably close approximation."

"Your point, sir?" the Viscount enquired.

"I'm coming to it. Our new head of Palace Security, Jerome Gregson, has suggested that Lady Diana – who was indeed wearing my wife's dress at the time she died – may have been killed by an assassin in the mistaken belief he was striking at Charis." His smile was grim. "For many reasons, I am reluctant to accept that theory. For one thing, I believe a House gets the enemies it deserves, and I hope and trust the royal Houses of Gondal and Gaaldine combined have earned a better class of assassin than such a blunder would denote. However, Frances – Miss Pickering – has kindly agreed to help me establish whether such a mistake would even be possible."

At the Crown Prince's use of his niece's Christian name – _not in the least a slip, if I know anything about that young man_ – Hector gaped in shock, and then took an enormous pinch of snuff to cover his confusion. He employed the next few moments shooting sidelong, suspicious glances at Elizabeth, which she took pleasure in repelling with an air of bland incomprehension.

"The next part of my account of the night may seem somewhat confusing." _Particularly to dullards like you_ hung, unspoken but not inaudible, on the air. "During the early part of the ball, Charis and Miss Pickering chose to exchange dresses. That led to unforeseen consequences, for both of them."

The gaze he turned on the Viscount could have cut steel. The young man cowered back in his chair, plainly unable to speak. Elizabeth found her hands clenching on the lion-carved finials of her chair arms. No matter how things had turned out, had that arrogant oaf believed himself at liberty to offer insult to Frances?

"He thought to rob the dove's nest and found the eyrie," John Watson murmured into her ear, in Latin. The Crown Prince directed a silencing glare in their direction. The physician seemed remarkably unperturbed by it.

"Lady Diana Scoton was among those misled; on seeing me dancing with my wife she supposed – and to make matters worse, told her companions – that Miss Pickering was behaving with unsuitable licence for an unmarried woman. I was asked to assist in correcting her misapprehension." He paused; a tinge of malice infused his voice. "I regret, my intervention was not an unqualified success."

 _An understatement of the first water, that._

Despite the death and fear and pain of the intervening hours, Elizabeth's recollection of Lady Diana's outrage at discovering that Frances' dancing partner was not merely impervious to her own charms but found her frankly ridiculous still had the power to force a betraying quirk to her lips. The Crown Prince – who clearly saw everything – flicked her the ghost of a wink, before returning to his exposition.

"While some might prefer to apply the maxim _de mortuis nihil nisi bonum_ , I have to say her acts on being apprised of the true position did her little credit. She manufactured an argument with her chaperone, Mrs Pickering, ostentatiously put herself under the care of Lady Wardale and then, somewhat later in the evening, pressured Miss Pickering into offering to swap dresses with her. I presume, incidentally, this was on the express or implied understanding that Miss Pickering's complaisance was a necessary pre-condition to any reconciliation between Lady Diana and Mrs Pickering?"

"Express, sir," Frances said, white to the lips. Elizabeth restrained herself, with an effort, from commenting. Better leave that sort of thing to the Crown Prince, who had no need to cultivate the goodwill of anyone in the room.

"Thought so. In any event, she did not keep her side of the bargain; she escaped the scene wearing my wife's dress and left Miss Pickering undressed in a closet. What happened to her after that –" He pursed his lips. "The curtains, if you would."

This was addressed to two palace servants who, evidently on some pre-arranged signal, had entered the library. They bowed, and one pulled the heavy drapery over the windows, shutting out every shaft of daylight. The other lit a few lamps, though scarcely enough to do more than create occasional pools of light around the room. The end bay, in which they sat, was especially gloomy.

The Crown Prince handed something to Frances. Elizabeth glimpsed her daughter's hands going to her face and then – nothing. Everyone gasped. The Crown Prince's voice had an unmistakeable note of satisfaction.

"As you see, a woman in black, wearing a mask, would have been all but invisible in the library on All Souls Eve, until she chose to make herself known. A difficult target for an assassin. Furthermore, no assignation in the library could have been pre-arranged except by someone who knew it was Lady Diana he – or she – was to meet there. Lady Diana spoke not a word of Gondalian or Gaaldine, and her Latin would have disgraced a six-year old. No-one could mistake her for the Crown Princess once she opened her mouth."

"Excuse me, sir." Hector's voice, but changed, thick and slurred. "I – I don't feel –"

There came a crash as a chair overturned, the thud of a heavy body hitting the floor.

"Light!" the Crown Prince snapped. The servitors plucked back the curtains. Hector lay, sprawled, on the floor. Elizabeth leapt to her feet.

"Keep back," John Watson commanded. "It may be an apoplexy. He needs air." He dropped to his knees besides Hector, thumbing back his eyelids with one hand, feeling for a pulse with the other. Hector groaned, turned onto his side, and vomited.

"Tell me how you feel," the physician said.

Hector's voice was faint, wracked with pain. His laboured breathing could be heard from yards away. "Ice. Ice-water in my veins. And bells ringing. Oxford bells. Can't someone muffle those damned bells? And I can't _see._ Yellow mist, over everything."

He gasped and clutched at his chest, curling around his agony. With a snap of his fingers, the physician summoned a footman, commanding him to bring water and his instrument case forthwith. He began rolling up his sleeves, preparing to bleed his patient.

Frances, her mask discarded, came to Elizabeth's side. "Mama –"

Dr Atherton joined her, towering over them. "Ma'am, is there anything I can –?"

"Yes," the Crown Prince interrupted. "Take your party into the Malachite chamber – one of the footmen will show you where that is – and wait there until I send word. It seems unlikely that we will be able to resume this meeting, but I should prefer you all to remain in the Palace for the time being."

Dr Atherton nodded, turning towards the others. At that moment Sir Hector convulsed, thrashing his limbs on the polished wood floor of the library. His hand connected with some small object, doubtless fallen from his pocket. It skidded across the floor. Frances put out a foot to stop it, bent down and picked it up. Hector's snuff-box.

Something changed in her daughter's expression; a sudden epiphany. Elizabeth had spent too much time around scholars – among them Dr Atherton – not to recognise the signs. Almost as if in a dream, she saw Frances flick the catch on the box, moisten the tip of one forefinger, dip it into the box, very delicately raise the finger to her lips –

And spit, with unladylike accuracy, into a nearby vase.

The Crown Prince swung to face her. "What?"

She held out the open snuff-box to him on her palm. "Sir, look."

He looked down and, even in this extremity, Elizabeth felt her stomach lurch at the focussed intensity in his expression, fought to find meaning in a world suddenly turned upside down.

"Miss Pickering and Mrs Pickering will stay with their kinsman," the Crown Prince said to Dr Atherton. "But now, take the others away. Go. Now. And you: water for Miss Pickering, at once."

As soon as the room was cleared Elizabeth crouched beside her brother, reaching for his hand. "Hector –"

His face was caught in a rictus, as if the muscles of his face were paralysed. His eyes rolled back in his head, testimony to the intensity of his pain. He tried to say something – to her dying day she would swear he had tried to say something. The pain took him, his head flopped back and his eyes dulled and she never knew whether it was only her hopes that shaped her brother's last word as "Sorry."

Hector had gone and she and Frances were alone.

The bookshelf in front of her swung outwards. The King stood beside her, holding out a hand to assist her to her feet. His dark eyes carried a weight of sorrow that might have daunted Atlas.

"Trust me, lady, I take no pleasure in having my earlier fears proved justified. But I should have been more specific. It is not merely death for which my brother has a nose. It is murder." He raised his voice, looking at the Crown Prince. "Sherlock, Milverton can do all that remains to be done here. Take John and go. I wish to see the perpetrator of this deed brought to justice before another turn of the glass. The honour of our House lies on it."

The Crown Prince bowed, very low, and without a trace of irony.

"Not just that of our House. My personal word, ma'am, on my blood oath."

He and the physician were gone; Frances succumbed to weeping and was led away by a female servant and Elizabeth was left with the King and the chilling corpse.

…..

Cold. After the initial flare of anger on seeing Sir Hector's contorted face and open, dulling eyes, he had felt nothing. Only cold.

He had known the truth as soon as he saw the flash of old-gold, watched Frances Pickering pick up Sir Hector's snuff-box from the library floor, caught the exchange between her and the Crown Prince. After that, it had simply been a matter of waiting.

Once Sir Hector's death had been confirmed they'd been given liberty to go (Why? part of his mind asked, even while the rest of him gasped in relief at the respite.) Ignoring the others, he'd headed straight to the pantry in the lodgings which served as gun room. The monogrammed case containing the matched pair of travelling pistols the Viscount had acquired in Paris rested on a low shelf. He checked them carefully, and found powder flask and shot bag. It was easy to conceal it all beneath the cloak he folded over his arm. He had his excuse ready; given such a turn of events, it was natural for someone to alert the Legation that the Protestant chaplain's services would be required once more.

The side door was on the latch. No-one tried to impede his departure, or even appeared to notice.

The same eerie simplicity characterised his arrival at the Legation. The gate guard had been on duty the previous day; he waved him through. No-one barred his passage through the lower reaches of the building. He did not knock when he reached the main reception room, but walked straight in. As he had expected, Derwent was alone; he half-turned at the sound of footsteps. For that split-second Hatherleigh saw Derwent's face unguarded. It was enough.

"Not expecting to see me again, were you? At least, not alive."

"What -?"

"Don't waste time, Derwent. That snuff-box you so kindly refilled this morning belonged to Sir Hector, not me. Jenkins mixed them up when he was cleaning them. The old fool noticed and sent Jenkins after me to reclaim his property. Sir Hector died raving, less than a hour ago. What did you put in there? Some local poison? After all, you did say you'd made – connections – in the city. That must help with your dirty work."

"You're mad." Derwent's voice conveyed assurance, sincerity, even a touch of compassion.

None of it could touch him.

"I have been. Not now. Not when my insane trust in you means that a prosy old bore who never did anything worse than skim a bit of cream off St Jerome's rent-rolls lies dead on a slab, his sister and niece left destitute, fourteen hundred miles from home."

"Sir Hector? The man could have been used in the schools of medicine anywhere in Europe as a perfect example of the choleric type. He's looked on the verge of apoplexy every time I've seen him. What more natural than an effluxion of blood into the brain should take him after the strains of the last few days? I assure you, _I_ had nothing to do with it."

"Sir, you lie."

Derwent was on his feet in an instant, his face inches from Hatherleigh's own. "Withdraw that damnable assertion at once."

"Withdraw it? No, sir. You are a liar. I'll repeat it in front of Lord Wardale, if you insist. Or would you prefer me to spit in your eye?"

"As a gentleman, you know there is only thing I can say to that."

Hatherleigh dropped his cloak to the floor, revealing the monogrammed pistol case. "Of course. I expected nothing else. Can you suggest a location?" He paused. "I regret, I cannot supply a second; I hardly think in the circumstances it would be proper to ask the Viscount."

"Better not, in any case. The King's edicts on the point are strict; the fewer people who know the better. There are places in the grounds of the old Castle where no-one comes for days at a time. I have little doubt we will find one suited to our purpose."

"Good. Then, let us go at once. I have few expectations of where I will be by dawn tomorrow."

They walked in silence. For Hatherleigh, the bustling streets of Gaaldine's capital seemed like those in the city of a dream. No-one could touch him, even when they bumped into him; he could not hear them, even when they damned his eyes and told him to get out of their way. Either he or they were ghosts and he neither knew nor cared which.

Cold.

The space they eventually found – a glade amid the sparse, unfamiliar trees which fringed the crag on which the Castle ruins perched – might have been designed for such affairs. It ran north-south – no small relief, with the late autumn sun already westering low – and was mercifully free of roots and boulders. Hatherleigh put the gun case down on a fallen tree trunk, and opened it.

"Choose," he said.

Derwent pointed at the right-hand pistol; they loaded in silence.

"Five paces each, turn and fire on the word?"

"As you wish."

Back to back, the pistol heavy in his hand, two thin layers of fabric between his flesh and Derwent's, the sun glancing down into a scene out of Arcadia, which might be the last sight he saw on earth, and still he felt nothing.

"One."

The first pace forward.

"Two."

And the next.

"Three."

"Gentlemen, put up your weapons, in the name of my brother the King." A sharp shout, almost like a pistol-crack itself in the loaded silence of the glade.

Hatherleigh turned. The Crown Prince, scimitar drawn, stood at the far end of the glade. Beside him stood the Crown Princess' physician. Hatherleigh's hand dropped, so that the pistol was pointing downwards. After a moment, Derwent did likewise. At a gesture from the physician, they laid the weapons in the opened case.

The Crown Prince strode towards them.

"Affairs of this kind are, as you both know, prohibited in Gaaldine by solemn edict. The penalties for contravention are not slight." His gaze flickered between the two of them. "So much for the duel. But, in weightier matters, my brother also charges me with certain responsibilities touching upon the maintenance of the rule of law. Murders taking place within the Palace most assuredly fall within my sphere. Each of you, severally, is under jeopardy on such a charge."

"Sir, I fear you are misinformed." Even in this crisis Derwent's voice came smooth off the tongue, like poured honey. "Whatever wild accusations this man may have scattered to avert the blame for his murder of his sister, Lady Diana Scoton – a crime most foul – I can refute them all."

The Crown Prince looked him up and down with icy contempt. "I am not accustomed to basing my conclusions upon anyone's assertions. Still less those made by interested parties. The contents of Sir Hector's snuff-box – they are more reliable than a cloud of witnesses."

Hatherleigh forced himself to speak, though his mouth was dry. "And sir, may I know what those witnesses say? After all, I have a personal interest."

The Crown Prince turned to him, his expression assessing. After a moment he nodded. "It contained two different qualities of snuff, the lower layer coarse and moist and the upper much finer and drier. As a snuff-taker yourself, you will appreciate that no-one would deliberately mix two incompatible styles in the same box." He paused, and then added, very drily, "I also strongly suspect no epicure in the art – indeed, no man who valued his life – would venture to adulterate his snuff with dried monkshood."

"Monkshood!"

"There is an outside chance it may have been henbane. Miss Pickering, however, collaborated on a notable paper to the Royal Society comparing the effects of a number of vegetable toxins, and her opinion is that monkshood – aconite – is more probable. In any event, the precise poison used will no doubt be identified when the Legation is formally searched."

Derwent went white. "Search the Legation? That is an outrage – not just to me but to his Excellency the Minister."

"Don't expect Lord Wardale to offer any refuge. Certain correspondence between him and his Britannic Majesty's ambassador to Gondal has come into the King's hands. Lord Wardale is answering for it at the Palace now." The Crown Prince smiled, with the pitiless cruelty of a bird of prey. "He will welcome any chance to deflect attention by handing into my power a subordinate who has proved himself a poltroon, a Judas, a pander and a liar."

Hatherleigh read Derwent's intention in his eyes, almost before he started to move.

"Philip, no!"

His hand grabbed Derwent's right arm, pulling the man towards him, away from the Crown Prince, as Derwent snatched up one of the pistols. The pistol went off with a roar like cannon. Hot agony flared in Hatherleigh's chest. There came a high-pitched shriek – not from his own mouth, though for a second he was unsure about that.

He forced his eyes open. Derwent's mouth was wide with shock and pain, his hand spread, the silver hilt of a knife protruding from it. The pistol lay at his feet. Guards burst from the undergrowth, pinioning Derwent's arms, dragging him away.

Pain overwhelmed him. Hatherleigh sprawled, helpless, on the floor of the glade, dimly aware of hands pressing on his chest, loosening the clothing at his neck. The Crown Prince and the royal physician. He supposed he should be honoured, but the pain absorbed every other feeling. Though it was curiously comforting to know himself not alone, to hear the matter-of-fact conversation above his head as they worked.

"You still carry a knife in your sleeve, then." The Crown Prince's voice, unmistakeably.

"Do you think I should stop?" John Watson could have been consulting an old friend about the merits of a horse or hound.

 _An old friend._ The grey shadows on the edge of his vision thickened; the dank cold crept further up his limbs, closer to what he had once thought was the seat of his heart.

"Why tamper with a working process? I'd rather you taught Charis the art."

" _Charis?_ A knife-thrower?"

"Why not? The day may come when she is all that stands between the heir to the combined kingdoms of Gondal and Gaaldine and an assassin."

"God forbid!"

"I agree. But God helps those who help themselves. Should that day dawn I'd lief that Charis be the most dangerous person in that room." The Crown Prince's voice sounded, suddenly, shockingly near. "We're losing him. John! Where's the laudanum?"

"Here. No, I'll administer it. Keep the pressure on the wound."

He felt the metallic coolness of a spoon being forced between his lips, tasted the bitter, complex flavour. The agony in his chest retreated a little, enough to permit speech.

"Don't – don't waste –" His tongue flickered out to moisten parched lips. "Dying." He tried to summon a smile, but feared the effect more grimace than gallantry. "No matter. Cheat the hangman."

The Crown Prince's hand on his forehead was cool but oddly sticky. His own blood, he realised.

"I assure you, whatever the outcome, the hangman is not in issue. Someone who deliberately takes a blow aimed at the heir to the throne can expect a pardon for far more grievous crimes than yours."

"I – I killed –"

"Lady Diana Scoton. I know. But I also know why. I do not care for extortioners. Nor did you premeditate your crime. Unlike he who put the poison in Sir Hector's snuff-box. Be assured, that will not go unavenged."

Comfort, and not a small matter, but the ability to care had left him. Dark clouds swirled around him, weight pressed down his eyelids, forcing them shut. It seemed too much effort to fight it. He let himself sink, knowing he would not rise again.


	12. High Noon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Oh, to be torn 'tweenst love and duty_...  
>  (Ballad of High Noon)

"Do you – ah – have to leave Gaaldine?"

Elizabeth felt faintly touched to notice that he was twisting the tassel of the heavy damask curtain round and round in his fingers, even while the prudent housewife in her wanted to slap his hand away, tell him how big a proportion of her yearly income was represented by even a yard of the smooth, silken rope he was so wantonly damaging.

One did not presume to teach practical economics to kings.

"What else can I do? The Viscount has very kindly agreed to let me and my daughter accompany his party –"

"Kindly? Accompany? The arrogant little puppy! As if you hadn't been just as much in his employ as your brother ever was and of ten times more use. He should pay you at least what he paid Sir Hector."

Appreciation from anyone had been scanty enough in her life for his words to start a warm glow beneath her stays. Still, a life-time's habit of self-deprecation could not be laid aside so easily.

"You over-value me, sir. And in any event, perhaps the Viscount finds it incumbent to retrench. The expenses of the last few days have been heavy indeed."

The King snorted; after a second she identified it as a laugh. "That I don't doubt. It should teach him not to play high-stakes games of chance in Big Gertie's backroom with unassuming men in ill-fitting robes."

She pursed her lips. "The Viscount always pushes the stakes very high when he believes his opponents may lack resources. He hopes to break their nerve by inducing them to contemplate his rent-rolls. I do not, myself, consider it sportsmanlike. When I heard about it, after the first evening's session, I felt quite distressed at the damage his opponent would have suffered had he lost. Especially when the Viscount _would_ insist on going back the next night, at double stakes."

"John's losing was never _particularly_ likely."

"The other gamester was Dr Watson?"

"It was indeed. It takes little effort to make a plain man unrecognisable to one accustomed to regard everyone he meets as beneath his notice, especially when he is already far gone in drink. And I don't doubt either Sherlock or Charis would – eventually – have prevailed upon John to allow them to make good his losses had he been unsuccessful. Especially since I'd had to remind them both of my edict against duelling, so John was, in a sense, acting as Charis's champion in the first place."

"The Crown Prince wished to challenge the Viscount?"

"They _each_ wished to challenge the Viscount. He should thank me for holding to my principles. I've seen that young man at sword-play. Sherlock would have taken him in less than three passes. With Charis, he'd have had a nearer contest. On the other hand Sherlock would have accepted first blood as satisfaction. Together, of course, with a lifetime's refined pleasure of rubbing the Viscount's nose in his defeat. Charis is a simpler soul. She would have taken it to the death."

She gulped. The King smiled. "Ah, yes. I had forgotten. We are savages, out here in the back of beyond, are we not? No wonder you are anxious to return to your native shores."

She thought she detected a flicker of hurt behind his suave tones. Scarcely surprising. Most of her party _had_ treated the people of the Gaaldine Court as if they were painted and feathered natives of some South Sea island. Not her, though. Nor, she hoped, Frances. Nor – bless him, Dr Atherton – though in his case he would, doubtless, have been equally enchanted with the South Sea islanders, and settled down quite happily with naked chiefs beneath palm trees to discuss the Nature of the One, comparative burial customs and the best way of dressing green turtle for the table.

"Not anxious at all, sir. Merely compelled by necessity."

"Necessity? You have, I believe, no family in England to whom you need hurry back."

She bit her lip. That, indeed, had been troubling her sleep. If Hector had left anything in England beyond debts she would be very surprised indeed. It would have to be her husband's cousins in Yorkshire, after all. The Sutcliffes would hardly let them be turned into the streets ( _probably_ at least).

"We will manage perfectly well," she said quellingly, and caught a flicker of surprise, hastily concealed, in the King's eyes.

"I have no doubt of it. It's only that – I had hoped –" He came to an awkward stop again, and then, like a rider whose horse has refused to jump a nasty place once, and so determines to beat it over the obstacle without a chance of a second look, said rapidly, without pausing for breath, "I deeply regret it is outside my power to offer you marriage."

She found herself struggling for breath. Her marriage, a quarter of a century ago, had been an arranged, pragmatic affair; a childless widower, twenty years older, looking for companionship, sound housekeeping skills (even at seventeen her distinguishing feature had been her practical commonsense) and willing to demand little by way of dowry. There had been no other offers, whether before James Pickering or after his death. Even in the most optimistic moments of her girlhood she had not dreamt of being wooed by a king.

 _And you aren't being wooed by one now._

She summoned up all she could of that commonsense. "That's just as well. Such a marriage would cause insuperable difficulties. I am, after all, a communicant of the Church of England and you are a Roman Catholic."

The King raised his eyebrows; she thought he was suppressing a smile. "Not a very good one."

"So I inferred from the events of All Hallows Eve," she said tartly.

He snapped his fingers dismissively. "You were, as I recall, there too. And in any event, fornication was not what I had in mind. I'll consider repenting of such-like amusements when the Archbishop stops accepting rent from Big Gertie. My difficulties are more theological in nature. I confess, when the Host is placed on my tongue not only do I find it difficult to feel the True Presence, but I find the thought somewhat distasteful. But that is not a viewpoint it would be politic to share with my subjects. A King of Gaaldine may only marry a Catholic, she being above a certain rank, or it would unleash civil war on the land."

"I honour your scruples. As you know, my husband lost friends, family and – in the end – his estate in consequence of the civil war in my country. I very much fear those days are soon to come again."

"As you will no doubt have noted, tensions are high between Gondal and Gaaldine, and we, too, have our internal troubles. If you were to stay, I could hardly offer you peace, either."

She looked at him and folded her arms. "Your grace, would it be possible for you to clarify what it is we are talking about? So far you have assured me you can offer me neither marriage nor peace. What, if anything, are you _trying_ to offer me?"

"Well, myself. Hadn't I made that clear?"

" _No_. Not clear at _al_ l." Her vision suddenly blurred; the iron control which had kept her back straight through what she had always known would be a painful farewell meeting crumbled into rust. She sagged against the chair arm.

"Oh, Elizabeth. Oh my dear."

Strong arms were about her, soft warm lips against her cheek. She tried to move, found herself trapped by a weight pinning her skirts.

 _The King. He's kneeling at my feet. On my feet._

She choked back a semi-hysterical giggle and rested her forehead against a velvet clad shoulder, inhaling his spicy, masculine scent. The grip around her tightened. What bliss, for once, to have someone to lean on, not be the one leaned against. And how much easier to have an awkward conversation when one didn't have to _look_ at the other person!

"Your grace. Do I understand that you are proposing an – an irregular arrangement?"

"Certainly not." The rumble of his indignation vibrated through her; his grip did not slacken one iota. "Everything done properly and with due order. I was proposing to settle a townhouse on you and an estate – it's not large, but a convenient half-day's ride from the capital and its home farm is famous for its dairy cattle – except in the very hottest months there should be butter, in case you miss it –"

"Actually, that was Lady Diana. I'm perfectly content with oil –" And how the devil did one end up discussing the comparative merits of cooking fats when a King – when the man you – loved – was offering you – was offering you –

Her heart sank as her mind finally got to grips with what, indeed, he was offering.

"All for love, or the world well lost," she murmured.

"What?"

She struggled out of his embrace, back into some semblance of an upright self-possession. A hopeless and implausible counterfeit; her dishevelled hair, rapid uneven breathing and flushed skin were all telling witnesses against her.

"Your grace, I am enormously sensible of the honour you wish to do me –"

"If it's children you're worrying about," he interrupted, "be assured I would acknowledge any with whom we were blessed with pride and the greatest of pleasure. They'd lack for nothing; tutors, fencing masters, musical instruments, war-horses, Toledo blades –"

"And for the boys?"

The jagged, open expression in the King's face – torn between laughter and a painful, yearning hope too fragile to be borne – almost undid her. She forced her voice level.

"Sir, it isn't our hypothetical future children –" she cursed under her breath as a break in her voice almost betrayed her. "What about Frances? A girl's marriageability is bound up with her mother's good name. How can I destroy her chances by sacrificing that? Whatever my personal wishes." It occurred to her the instant the phrase slipped off her tongue that she had betrayed a little too much. Judging by the King's expression, he knew it, too. She cursed, inwardly. She had been around stupid men too long. Or, at least, men so indifferent to her she could have said anything in their hearing and they would pay it no mind.

"Judging by the fact that your daughter remains in single blessedness at the age of twenty-four, it would seem that a life lived in blameless rectitude amid Oxford's cloisters has not done a great deal to enhance her marriageability, either. Perhaps it's time you tried a different stratagem." He exhaled. "Or accept that, perhaps, Frances does not consider marriage her main aim in life."

A man had no business understanding her deepest fear, let alone voicing it, especially not when he was in the process of trying to persuade her to act against her better judgement.

"Rubbish. All girls want to be married," she said, with a robust confidence she did not feel. The King raised his eyebrows again.

"Really? I do wonder, then, how the very well-populated convents of this kingdom find candidates. Perhaps, if you stay, you should find time to discuss it with the Abbess of Norburyness."

"If I stay as your mistress, I scarcely foresee the Abbess being willing to talk to me."

"Why not? You could compare notes. The Abbess only discovered her vocation after my grandfather's death, after all. Though they do say, do they not, that there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner -?"

"I doubt they say it as an inducement to commit the sin in the first place."

The King was silent for a moment. Then he leant forward and cupped her face in his hands. "Elizabeth. I want you. And – I'll not lie – I am used to getting what I want."

 _Are you? Truly? In anything that really matters?_

Where had that thought come from? This was honestly not the time to start feeling sorry for him – once she went down that road she was lost, for sure.

His voice continued; slow, melodious, fluent, only betraying by the smallest hesitation on "v"s and "s"s that he was not a native speaker of English.

"But I do not wish you to feel compelled, trapped, constrained in any way. Look – don't feel you have to travel with the Viscount's party. Leave them to get themselves into – and out of, if they can manage it, which I doubt – every mess they can find between the Gaaldine border and the white cliffs of Dover. If you wish to go, allow me to arrange couriers and a suitable escort. And – Elizabeth – I have agents in London. It is little harder for me to acquire an estate for you in – say – Sussex than it is for me to do the same in Gaaldine. Allow me to do that for you, at least."

"In _Sussex_? The whole breadth of Europe away? And how does that benefit you?"

He flushed. "It affords me the satisfaction of knowing that the woman I love is not eking out a squalid existence as the poor relation of uncouth Yorkshire churls."

Her jaw dropped. "How did you – that can't have been your agents in London. You haven't had time."

The King shrugged. "It can hardly be a surprise to you that your late brother was both garrulous and indiscreet in his cups. Particularly when flattered by my interest."

 _But if he asked Hector –_

"When did you determine to pursue me?"

He did have the grace to look somewhat sheepish. "When I read my agents' reports on your party, when you first crossed the border from Gondal – don't look at me like that, I said tensions were running high, surveillance of aliens is an ordinary precaution – it occurred to me that to have avoided disaster for so long given the provocations you were, as a group, offering on a daily basis at least one of you must have more than uncommon talents. I was agog to discover which of you it could be. But I confess, the moment when you chose to tell my brother he was making a damaging show of himself –"

Her hand went to her mouth. "I was over-tired and I never intended –"

The King grinned. "Oh, I rather think you did. And, blessedly, he listened. He actually listened. Have you any idea how uncommon that is? I knew then my world would be incomplete without you. Of course, he's likely to react badly to your coming under my protection."

"So, your grace, outline the advantages of your proposal once more. No marriage, no peace and no encouragement from your family –"

"And no butter, at least during the hot months," the King concluded, nodding. There was a giddy hilarity in his voice, which was, somehow, infectious. She found herself desperately trying to restrain an urge to giggle.

"In that case, I believe I am left with no alternative. I have to accept."

And his arms were around her and his lips upon hers and the giggles had somehow got mixed up with tears but that didn't matter, nothing mattered except this moment and the two of them.

**Author's Note:**

> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
> _The English Party_
> 
> Doctor Andrew Atherton, Fellow of St Jerome's College, Oxford, natural philosopher.  
> Sir Hector Bainbridge, sometime Master of St Jerome's College, Oxford, now tutor and director of studies for Viscount Dalgliesh  
> Crispian, Viscount Dalgliesh, heir to the Duke of Collompton.  
> Lady Diana Scoton, daughter of the Duke of Collompton  
> Mrs Elizabeth Pickering, sister to Sir Hector and chaperone to Lady Diana  
> Miss Frances Pickering, only daughter of Mrs Elizabeth Pickering and companion to Lady Diana  
> Mrs Grace Vinson, tiring woman to Lady Diana Scoton  
> Benjamin Hatherleigh, private secretary to Viscount Dalgliesh.  
> Conte d'Imola, guide and translator to the party  
> Jenkins, general factotum.
> 
> _His Britannic Majesty's Legation to the Court of Gaaldine_
> 
> Lord Wardale, his Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary  
> Lady Wardale, wife to the above  
> Lord Philip Derwent, first secretary of the Legation, third son of the Earl of Buxton.
> 
>  
> 
> _At the Gaaldine Court._
> 
> Mycroft, King of Gaaldine  
> Sherlock, Crown Prince of Gaaldine and rightful Prince Consort of Gondal  
> Charis, Crown Princess of Gaaldine and rightful Queen of Gondal  
> John Watson, personal physician to the Crown Princess and representative of the Queen of Gondal's interests on the Council of Gaaldine  
> The Duke of Holderness, Lord Chamberlain of Gaaldine and chairman of the Council of Gaaldine  
> Lady Anthea, person of unspecified but vital importance to the King of Gaaldine  
> The Count d'Houx, nobleman of Gaaldine with a tragic past  
> Andrew Dimmock, head of Palace security  
> Jerome Gregson, deputy head of Palace security  
> Jonathan, member of the Crown Prince's guard
> 
> Assorted guards, servitors, courtiers and people to clean up the mess.
> 
> Please note that Frances Pickering and other unmarried female characters without titles are given the mildly anachronistic title "Miss" rather than the contemporary "Mrs" for purposes of disambiguation.
> 
>  
> 
> A downloadable e-book version appears [ here ](http://ajhall.shoesforindustry.net/ebooks/39/ajhall_the_curious_incident_of_the_knight_in_the_library/)


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